Decanter reports that Tesco is using 300g screwcap bottles on its own-label Australian NV red wine. The standard glass bottle is 420g.
A step in the right direction for saving on carbon emissions, but I wonder if it's a solid enough bottle to become a real alternative packaging option. The article says the lighter bottle has the same resistance as a regular bottle, but Tesco is only risking its finest Australian NV red for now. So if it break they lose, what, $0.15 of product?
A good start.
ReplyDeleteWhen I wrote my Diploma paper on packaging, there was a lot of buzz about the lighter weight glass bottles. It turns out that you can get down to about 250g without any significant decrease in bottle strength. Of course, then you'll have some consumers picking up the bottle and saying "oh this is light." That's offset by some enormous transport savings by shaving a couple of kilograms of weight per case.
From my own experience in retail and restaurants, people do associate the heavier bottle with a 'better' wine. Does the customer really have an adverse reaction to a lighter bottle?
ReplyDeleteMaybe if the bottle announced itself as lower carbon footprint that would help. Because lower weight in the hand plus lower price probably won't register as quality in the consumers' mind...
I've seen the same thing in retail, heavy bottle = success. In fact, for years our best seller was a French red from the 2000 vintage in a heavy bottle. They redesigned the packaging dispensing with the heavy bottle (among other things) for the next vintage (2005) and its sales fell off. How much of that sales dropoff was due the normal bottle? the vintage? changing tastes? who knows?
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of some association that would measure the sales effects of lighter bottles, but I think it would have to be on a winery-by-winery basis (if they would want to share such private information).
ReplyDeleteWould be a great paper for any budding economists out there...
It seems that if sales were not negatively impacted by a lighter bottle, that would be worth a slide in the Power Point presentation the bottle guy would make. So I suspect they can't make a solid case for that yet.