Evolution of Wine in Bag-in-Box

Wine always had the areola of belonging to people with a sophisticated life style, a little snobbish maybe. Certainly snobbish, when you read the lyrical descriptions of the so-called wine connoisseurs, putting you (the simpleton) off because you have little interest in the either critical or lyrical, fancy-full, high-flying words for the wine which flavour you just happen to enjoy.

The last years the wine market changed and wine received a wide popularity as alternative to beer, but was still only marketed in bottles. No renowned 'chateau' would spend a minute of thought to change the bottle for a more popular, vulgar way of packaging. However, the market dictates. Australia and California, two of the outsiders of the European snobbish wine countries, started to market their wines in alternatives. First Tetra Paks and PET-bottles with a coating from Constar, and the not generally accepted bag-in-box. Astra in South Africa launched an alternative bag-with-spigot to the bag-in-box, the Versus, and PPI launched a one-portion wine bag.
It made wine more popular and appealed to the growing concern of people regarding the environment, but still was only used for popular table wines for barbecues and picnics.

The upscale wine brands needed an answer. And see three beautiful and distinguished designs entered recently the market. One from Romania, one from California and one from Washington (no not DC). Let's have a look how high-quality wines in alternative packages can still keep their 'distinguished chateau image'.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Romanian design bureau Grapefruit was awarded the Bronze Pentaward at the competition’s 2008 edition for the packaging design of Vinexport’s bag-in-box wine range. Vinexport, the fifth biggest wine producer in Romania, wanted to create a new brand that would combine the wine-specific tradition with packaging innovation.
At the creative level, the new products were allusively named “A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Royal Feteasca” and “The Merlot Code”, whereas the packaging was designed to support the brand’s quality level by rendering the image of an old book.
The concept modernizes the perceptions on bag-in-box wines, in competition with foreign brands from the more traditional wine-producing countries (France, Italy, and Spain).

The outside of the box is made from 250 gr/m2 duplex cardboard and typographically printed with polychrome and UV lacquer. Inside is a corrugated cardboard box for strength and of course the wine-bag with spigot. The spigot can be reached through a perforated area and pulled outside.

Saving the earth with a tube at a time
It is nothing out of the ordinary to see exclusive whisky’s presented in a cardboard tube as sales promotion, whereas the whisky still is and will be bottled in a glass bottle. Although also the first impression with this new packaging for the premium quality Cabernet wine of Four Wines, that impression, however, is wrong. The tube indeed is the second packaging, whereas the wine is stored in a plastic bag with spigot. In other words a luxurious bag-in-box or bag-in-tube packaging.

Four Wines offers his premium Cabernet, made from 92% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8% Petite Sirah by the renowned winemaker Barry Gnekow, in a stylish cylindrical box or tube, as upscale alternative to the common rectangular bag-in-box packaging or the traditional glass-with-cork bottles.

Skipping the relatively expensive traditional glass-and-cork packaging, enabled Four to create a much higher quality wine for its eco-friendly packaging and still being price-competitive. As a consequence, Four Wines is the first up-scale Cabernet Sauvignon produced in a non-traditional packaging. According to the company this wine is comparable with Cabernets double the price and is far superior to the quality of the wines usually packed in bag-in-boxes or similar packages.

The unique 3 ltr wine tube, in which the wine stays fresh to 4 weeks after opening, is not just an outstanding wine in a beautiful packaging. The attractive, innovative packaging has a 50% lower CO2-emission compared to traditional glass bottles.
According to the company, a standard glass wine bottle of 750 ml generates approximately 5,2 kg CO2-emission when transported from California to a shop in New York. The Four 3 ltr tube generates approximately half the emission per 750 ml.
Moreover the wine tube gives 85% less waste and is made from 100% recyclable material, while the labels are printed with a printer powered by wind energy.

Badger Mountain Organic Wines
Badger Mountain Winery wanted to produce Washington State's first certified organic wines, which led to the more eco-friendly bag-in-box (BIB) format to supplement the winery's traditional 750 ml glass bottles.

With this packaging Badger Mountains proves to the world that the once elitist moss-grown wine chateaux are transformed into a wine industry bubbling over with packaging innovations.
The box has the aura of high quality up-scale spirits, such as an exclusive French cognac and has nothing in common with the typical bag-in-box packages for table wines. A perfect and beautiful example of the evolution in bag-in-box packages.

The cartons for the Pure Red/ White 3 ltr bag-in-box, made by Pacific Southwest Container, are constructed from an E Flute - 012SBS top sheet (solid bleached sulphate, a virgin paperboard made from kraft pulp with a clay coating) - 33lb medium - 35lb kraft inside liner. A so called SFL Carton (Single Faced Laminate carton).

Pacific Southwest Container prints the flat sheets of SBS substrate using 3 UV inks and a UV gloss coating on a UV 40 KBA Rapida off-set lithography printing press, after which the printed top sheets are laminated to the medium (the wavy section) and the inside liner board on an Asitrade Laminator. A Bobst SP130-E die cuts the sheets and scores them into the flat shape of the wine carton.

Badger Mountain chose a collapsible inner bag with tap from Scholle Packaging. The film is a Scholle DuraShield High Barrier Film, a three-layer film that provides a high oxygen barrier with a transmission rate as low as .387cc/m2/day. The film is manufactured as a single-ply, which creates exceptional strength in the seams.
The fitment is the Scholle FlexTap, the first push-button automatic shut off tap, with which consumers can regulate the flow rate by the amount of pressure they use on the tap.

To fill the bag-in-boxes Badger Mountain uses a semi-automatic Scholle TruFill 900 Series filler.

Evolution or Revolution?
In 1990, two school districts in the state of California banned the book Little Red Riding Hood because one of its illustrations showed her carrying a bottle of wine in a basket.

Well, the modern day Little Red Riding Hood can now, with a clear conscience, visit her grandmother by carrying an old book, a carton tube or exclusive box in her basket and still has the satisfaction to serve her grandmother a premium glass of wine without the risk to be banned again.

Note: The trivia about Little Red Riding Hood I picked from a publication in Packaging Digest of 9 Aug. 2008.

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Milk in a Pouch - Innovative and Sustainable

The milk container market, one of the most important and traditional of all the food and beverage packaging segments is ripe for sustainable developments and design novelties. From the glass milk bottle to the existing plastic or cardboard containers over more than 60 years little changed in that market. Up till recently.

Last year UK’s Food and Farming Minister, Lord Rooker, called for the dairy industry to become more sustainable, targeting 50% reduction of plastics used in milk packaging as a key goal for 2020. (photo right courtesy Waitrose)

Although for the majority of industries sustainability is solely a moral issue at best, pressure of the environment conscious consumer in turning it around into an economic issue is evident. As a consequence marketing departments and designers have to see it as a creative challenge. The challenge is to come up with aesthetically attractive designs that are environmentally responsible, grant the basics of protecting and presenting the product, stimulate consumer behaviour to purchase and repurchase. Although not a consumer requirement, an innovative packaging might be a sales-booster.
Here starts the contradiction. Some companies have introduced highly disruptive designs creating a huge impact on the shelves in the supermarkets. Some have even managed to create revolutions in a specific category of packaging by using different structures or materials. However, consumers, hate change of the traditional and trusted day-to-day products, and there is always a degree of resistance to anything that affects the tradition. One of these “traditional” categories is the milk packaging.

The US consumer is much more conservative in regard to changes in packages of basic day-to-day products, in contrast to the UK consumer who is more open to changes in ‘traditional’ packaging as long as ‘greenness’ and sustainability is served, and convenience not frustrated.

In the UK and the USA in particular, the dairy industry is marketing its milk products in plastic milk bottles, mostly made from High Density Polyethylene (HDPE), causing a tremendous pressure on landfill and nature.

Widely used in the European and sparsely in the UK and US milk industry, the Tetra laminated cardboard packs are common in the juice sector. Although reasonable green, the discarded empty packs can’t be put in the main cardboard recycling stream as they are made with plastic coated lamination and contain aluminium elements and other materials which prevent their disposal into the general recycling schemes. They require special recycling facilities.
As far as I know, there are none Tetra recycling facilities in the UK (and the USA) at the moment, only in Brazil, where Tetra Pak has a recycling plant for their packs.

These two packages, the plastic bottle and the Tetra pack, are the two main pillars on which the distribution chain of milk is based.

Let’s have a look at three recently developed ‘green’ milk packages in the UK:


• Suffolk’s Marybelle dairy began in late 2008 to sell its milk in ASDA stores located in eastern England in the new GreenBottles (see photo above). The GreenBottle is made from cardboard pulp with a plastic inner bag. As a matter of fact you could call it a bag-in-box. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for GreenBottle completed by PIRA found that the carbon footprint of GreenBottle was 48% lower than the HDPE milk bottle.
• Daylesford, an organic UK dairy producer managed to innovate both structure and materials, resulting in a sensational milk packaging, which I baptized bag-pack. Made from calcium carbonate, the biodegradable, bag-like plastic pack is cut into a striking jug shape. It is innovative, stylish and sustainable.
• Sainsbury’s debuted the milk bag with Jugit from Dairy Crest that comprises of a plastic pouch of milk used in conjunction with a specialized reusable jug. The jug’s two-piece lid features a hollow spike attachment that perforates the pouch when closed. The top of the attachment flips open to provide a handy, recloseable spout.

The GreenBottle - A Bag-in-Box
When you take a look at the bottle with its mat white appearance, it looks like a plastic milk container. However it is a double folded tray made from cardboard pulp, a system identical to the well-known pulp packages for eggs. The outer shell is made from recycled paper (90.7% waste paper) which can be recycled again, or if left it will just decompose within a matter of weeks. The plastic inner liner, which takes up less than 0.5% of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill, prevents liquid from contaminating the paper case. The bag can be made from conventional Low Density Polypropylene or a Corn Starch alternative.
The GreenBottle consumes about a third of the energy required to make a plastic bottle and has a Carbon Footprint that is 48% lower than plastic.

To get this result some handling has to be done: First a loose inner bag is inserted into a paper spout. The bag is then folded and with the spout, placed into the outer shell. The bottle rim is glued, folded over and closed. Finally the bottle is filled, the spout is closed and sealed, and the label is applied.

Resistance of the consumer is probably minimal as the final result looks and handles like a plastic milk container. A clever idea, which has some similarities with the 360-Paper-Water-Bottle, I wrote about some time ago.

Bio-degradable bag-pack
Over twenty years ago, Daylesford began to turn their family land in the Cotswolds and Staffordshire over to sustainable, organic farming. It was the start of a passion: to grow crops naturally, and rear healthy animals. The rich organic milk from their herd of Friesians - a different taste entirely from more industrially produced milk - seemed to entreat Daylesford to expand in a creamery and other related activities.

Skilled artisan cooks work alongside organic gardeners; cheese-making is practised next door to willow basket-weaving, dry stone walling and other traditional, precious country crafts; people working together, sharing a vision.
From this traditional, if you like ‘old-fashioned’ environment, almost gone everywhere else in the world, comes an amazing development: The bio-degradable milk bag-pack.

As Daylesford does not reveal details, we have to make an assumption as the 'Daylesford' bag-pack (photo left) looks very similar to the recently by Sweden-based manufacturer Ecolean (photo under) unveiled new lightweight aseptic packaging system for liquid food products.

This package is made up from a flexible multi-layered polymer film, baptized Calymer, consisting of 60% polyethylene and polypropylene and 40% calcium carbonate.
According to the manufacturer, the package weighs just 14 grams, which is a 40-50% reduction on a conventional liquid food carton or bottle.
Although flexible material, the bag-pack stands up steadily, thanks to the flat-bottom design that does the job. The air-filled handle makes it easy to get a grip and the spout makes it easy to pour.

The Calymer material should not be confused with bio-degradable plastics on the market as they follow a different life-cycle. According to Ecolean’s site, a disposed Calymer package can either be recycled as a traditional plastic or “recovered as energy by incineration.” And here is the difference with Daylesford, as they claim that the bag-pack is bio-degradable.

The system requires a proprietary production line with filling machines and packing stations. The filling machine opens, fills and re-seals the packages in 2.4 seconds. Although their Ecolean packaging is available with the system, the Calymer material itself is not for sale separately.

Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula CaCO3. It is a common substance found in rock, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms, and eggs..

The Jugit
In the past milk-in-a-bag has been introduced in several markets, among others in the Netherlands, with none or little success. Apparently the UK consumer is more open to this type of 'dressed-down' milk packaging and I must say the jug necessary to be used with this milk bag has undergone a tremendous innovation.

Developed by Dairy Crest in association with the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain, Jugit offers consumers a pouch-based format that uses substantially less packaging material than conventional plastic milk containers, allied to the convenience of an easy-to-pour, reusable jug.

The basic consumer resistance to adopting liquid pouches is the means of opening and pouring. Typical consumer fears about pouches include the suspicion that bags will burst, their lack of recloseability and concerns that they can only be opened using scissors. Design agency Vibrandt 1hq developed the Jugit to specifically overcome these factors.

The secret to Jugit’s success is an innovative two-part lid featuring a hollow spike attachment, which perforates the pouch as a natural consequence of assembly. After the pouch is dropped into the jug and the main body of the lid closed, trapping the top of the bag using secure clips, the spike is inserted to perforate the pouch. The top of the attachment then flips open to provide a handy, recloseable pouring spout.

The lid, spike and handle are injection moulded in white PP, while clear material is used for the two pint jug all manufactured by RPC Market Rasen. The pouches are manufactured by Glopak.

This new packaging system for milk for Dairy Crest, has been so successful that it is now been extended to over 200 Sainsbury’s and Waitrose stores across the UK.

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Water in an octagonal Bag-in-Box

Two major natural elements, water and wood, play a central role in the "Lindoya Vida" (Life in the Box) 22-ltr octagonal bag-in-box with mineral water from the Mineração Mantovani fountains. The BIB-pack consists of a corrugated cardboard case with two-die-cut handles and a laminated bag with dispensing tap.

The corrugated case is manufactured by Klabin - Brazil's largest producer and recycler of paperboard. The octagonal shape of the box was not only chosen from an aesthetic point of view, but also because it gives a perfect palletising pattern.

The two-layer bag, provided by DuPont Liquid Packaging Systems/Liqui-Box, has a 3.8-mil (96.5 mu) outside layer of a bi-axially oriented nylon composition and an inner layer of 2.5-mil (63.5 mu) polyolefin. DuPont Liquid Packaging Systems delivers the ready-made bags, both in 3 and 5-gal (11.35 and 18.93 ltr) sizes equipped with a dispensing tap. The bags are filled on the Liqui-Box model 1000 CIT-W filling machine with a capacity of four 5-gal bags/min.

Klabin wanted a sustainable packaging that could guarantee the quality of the water from the time of filling up till the moment of consumption. The definition of sustainable meant that it should be economically viable, environmentally and socially correct.
The economic viability refers to the price per litre of the new packaging, with a market price that should be between those of Brazil’s two most popular containers, a 20-ltr bottle and a 1.5-ltr PET bottle.
The definition ecological meant a 100% recyclable, biodegradable corrugated cardboard box made from renewable raw material resources harvested from the re-planted forests. The result is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, the international body that governs proper management of forests and their production chains. The plastic bag and the dispensing valve are also recyclable.
And finally, the condition: social justice. The packages are guaranteed fraud-resistant, while the companies involved in the manufacturing collaborate actively in a positive development of the communities in which they are located.
In addition to environmental benefits, the corrugated cardboard box prevents light from entering, as well as it insulates the water from heat, with which the sensation of "fresh water" is much longer experienced than with clear bottles.
The strong corrugated cardboard box, printed in three colours on a white kraft liner, is sealed with hot-melt. The tamper-evident valve allows the bag to be filled without any manual contact with the water.
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Weslley Murylo The Souza Steeman