The facility is the second aluminium bottling plant to be opened in Europe and the first able to bottle drinks other than water.
The 8,000 square foot site was constructed on the back of a £1m investment secured by Melvin Jay, the founder of The Sustainable Bottling Co and soda brand GUNNA Drinks. GUNNA lemonades will be bottled at the facility, while it will also offer white label aluminium bottling to the drinks industry.
Currently around 70% of soft drinks are bottled using single use plastics, but aluminium is infinitely recyclable. Unlike most aluminium cans, bottles are resealable which makes them far easier to reuse.
It is estimated that an average of 35.8m plastic bottles are used every day in the UK, but only 19.8m are recycled. Meanwhile, only around 10% of everyday plastic gets recycled in the UK, with the majority sent to the incinerator, landfill or abroad.
The Sustainable Bottling Co will offer 470ml aluminium bottles, which GUNNA products are packaged in, but also has the capacity to produce bottles from 330ml to 750ml.
Jay said that he is a “passionate advocate” of sustainability and has placed this focus at the heart of the GUNNA business for the past six years.
“It’s incredibly exciting to be launching The Sustainable Bottling Co and be able to offer the industry access to significantly more planet-friendly bottling,” Jay added.
“We believe aluminium bottles are the future. We’ve put significant investment in place to bring this vision to life, and we know that sustainable packaging is something that brands, retailers and shoppers are all actively looking for.
“There are far-reaching needs across the FMCG industry for aluminium bottling and we can’t wait to start fulfilling these and helping to reduce the drinks sec-tor’s reliance on harmful single use plastic bottles. The potential environmental ramifications here are huge and we’re excited to be able to make responsibly sourced and sustainable packaging more accessible.”
In other news, Crosta & Mollica has received private equity backing and appointed a new chair.
