Regional overview: Asia
Over the past decade, a number of Asian container glass producers have opted for lightweight glass bottles. Glass International presents an overview of lightweight glass production in three major Asian glass markets.
www.glass-international.com
Asia opts for lighter glass L ightweight glass bottles have become extremely popular in the global container glass industry over the last two decades; a number of glass producers have added lightweight bottles to their portfolio in recent years. Rapid advances in manufacturing technology has made it possible to create particularly thin-walled lightweight glass containers. Instead of the traditional blow-and-blow process, glass producers have chosen the narrow-neck-press and blow process. Lightweight glass technology enables glass manufacturers to produce bottles to weigh much less while remaining as strong and stable as their heavier predecessors. In 2019, the average weight of bottles had fallen by 30% over the previous decade, according to figures from Statista. For example, Accolade, the biggest wine bottler in the UK, has decreased its proportion of bottles over 500g from 17% in 2017 to 3% in 2020. Over the same period, the amount of bottles that weigh less than 390g has risen from 24% to 42%. Recently, global brewer AB InBev developed the world’s lightest longneck beer bottle for commercial production. Frederik De Graaf, Global Director of Packaging Technology Development at AB InBev said: “If used on a year’s worth of glass production for AB InBev
brands in Europe alone, this would be the equivalent to taking 62,000 cars off the roads annually, in terms of CO2 emissions.” The brewer has reduced the weight of its standard longneck beer bottle from 180 to 150 grams, reportedly cutting its CO2 emissions by 17% per bottle. “This success is the fruit of intensive collaboration with our external glass partners, having shared knowledge and worked together on new glass coatings, new mould coatings and modern converting technology to strengthen the glass.” Mr De Graaf went on to highlight the difficulties within the project. “When reducing the weight of the bottle, we were faced with strength challenges – beer is, of course, a carbonated drink and inside pressure can build up due to the gas expanding under certain heat conditions.” AB InBev is now exploring how to release the new bottle, initially in Europe, as a one-way deposit. The next challenge for the company and its glass suppliers will be to further develop technologies to lightweight returnable bottles, which need to survive many cycles.
Asian production Much like their European counterparts, Asian producers have embraced
lightweight container glass production technology . Although the volume of lightweight glass containers produced in Asia is far less (as a % of total production) than Europe, it is growing each year. Along with the savings in raw material, energy and total cost of production, lightweight containers are also gaining in popularity due to rising transportation costs. The growth in e-commerce, and demand for cost-efficiency in relation to fuel, will create more opportunities in the near future in Asian countries.
Japan Japanese container glass producers have been the pioneers of lightweight glass production in Asia. Major manufacturers Toyo Glass and Nihon Yamamura Glass Company have provided technical assistance to a number of glass producers, as well as producing their own lightweight bottles. They have assisted the Philippines’s San Miguel Yamamura Glass (SMYPC), South Korean Kumbi Glass Corporation and Technopak Solutions, Indonesian PT Muliaglass, Vietnam’s San Miguel Yamamura Haiphong Glass and Thailand’s Siam Glass. The Japan Glass Bottle Association determines the lightweight level of all glass containers using a specific
40 0 Glass International November 2021
Seema.indd 1
23/11/2021 14:24:59
