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Carlsberg unveils plans for paper beer bottle

Carlsberg has unveiled plans to produce the world’s first “paper bottle” for beer.

The beer company revealed the Green Fibre Bottle during the C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark last week.

Carlsberg made two prototypes of the Green Fibre Bottle, both using sustainably sourced wood fibres with an inner barrier to allow the bottles to contain beer.

One prototype uses a thin recycled PET polymer film barrier, and the other a bio-based PEF polymer film barrier. These prototypes will be used to test the barrier technology as Carlsberg seeks to provide a 100 per cent bio-based bottle without polymers.

“We continue to innovate across all our packaging formats, and we are pleased with the progress we’ve made on the Green Fibre Bottle so far. While we are not completely there yet, the two prototypes are an important step towards realising our ultimate ambition of bringing this breakthrough to market. Innovation takes time and we will continue to collaborate with leading experts in order to overcome remaining technical challenges, just as we did with our plastic-reducing Snap Pack,” Myriam Shingleton, vice president group development at Carlsberg Group, said.

Carlsberg started Green Fibre Bottle in 2015 with EcoXpac, packaging company BillerudKorsnäs and post-doctoral researchers from the Technical University of Denmark. It was supported by Innovation Fund Denmark and the project resulted in putting up a new paper bottle business Paboco, the paper bottle company – a joint venture between BillerudKorsnäs and bottle manufacturing specialist ALPLA.

“The work with our partners since 2015 on the Green Fibre Bottle illustrates that this kind of innovation can happen when we work together. We’re delighted that other like-minded companies have now joined us as part of Paboco’s paper bottle community. Partnerships such as these, ones that are united by a desire to create sustainable innovations, are the best way to bring about real change,” Shingleton said.

Coca-Cola, The Absolut Company and L’Oreal SA will join Carlsberg to form a paper bottle community, launched by Paboco, aimed at advancing sustainable packaging using paper bottle technology.

The latest innovation is part of its program, Together Towards Zero, in which it aims to have zero carbon emissions at its breweries and a 30 per cent reduction in its carbon footprint by 2030.

In September, Carlsberg created another sustainable solution to hold its beers, called the Snap Pack replacing the typical plastic wrapping.

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