Krones water bottle wins sustainability prize

Krones’ ShoulderFlex bottle has won this year’s German Packaging Prize in the ‘Sustainability’ category, with the ultimate deciding factor being its weight of 5.9 g.

The ShoulderFlex is designed to help reduce the carbon footprint of water bottles by yielding material savings of up to 50% in comparison with conventional 0.5 L water bottles.

The lightweight water bottle also contributes to stackability during the production and processing stages, where, even without the stabilising effect of nitrogen pressurisation, the bottles have a filled topload of up to 40 kg.

Martin Loistl and Jochen Forsthövel, from the development team, said a key message in Krones’ vision is the responsible use of packaging materials, which includes developing sustainable packaging solutions.

“Despite the smaller amounts of PET needed to produce them, these containers are in no way inferior to conventional bottles currently on the market as far as stability and convenience are concerned,” Loistl and Forsthövel said.