The company is confident that the creation of a bottle of easily recyclable paper will make a real revolution in the world of packaging.
So far, only the first prototype of a paper bottle has been presented, in which it was still not possible to do completely without plastic, the lid and the inner layer to hold the liquid are made of it. In both cases, 100% recyclable plastic is involved. But the main goal of the developers is to create a package in which this material is generally absent as such.
The bottle is developed in an innovation laboratory Coca-Cola in Brussels, Belgium. Stein Franssen, Coca-Cola's EMEA packaging innovation manager, commented, “Our vision is to make a paper bottle that can be recycled like any other type of paper, and the finished prototype is the first step towards achieving this goal. The paper bottle opens up a whole new world of packaging possibilities and we are convinced that paper packaging will play a role in the future.”
Coca-Cola notes that a paper bottle must meet all high safety and quality standards, like any other food packaging. Now the new packaging is undergoing comprehensive testing in the laboratory. Researchers are testing how durable it is, how well it protects the drinks inside, and how it behaves in the refrigerator.
Further processing and marketing issues are also being considered. No even approximate dates for the appearance of a new type of packaging on the shelves have yet been announced. The main task now is to find a way to abandon the plastic gasket inside.
In the meantime, work in this direction is also being carried out by companies Carlsberg from Denmark and Pernod Ricard from France (the latter is best known as a producer of vodka Absolut). However, the prototypes presented by them also still have a plastic inner layer inside.
