Famous Grouse loses weight

Mike Rose with new lightweight bottle.

• From Edie.net

Famous Grouse scotch whisky is set to be sold in lighter packaging weighing only 340g -- a 14% weight reduction previously not thought possible in the production of premium spirit bottles.

The ground-breaking prototype, develped by Edrington, hails a technical first for the bottling industry and will be tested in a selection of Scottish supermarkets this autumn.

Edrington's director of technical services, Mike Rose, said, "We set out to prove that it was possible to produce a glass bottle under 400g which still supports premium features like engraving and embossing and can cope with the speed of our production line, which runs at up to 600 bottles per minute.

"It was a stern test for the new bottle, but it ran successfully through all of the processes without any hitches or breakages. Now that we have a prototype, tests are underway to see whether it is feasible to roll the new bottle out across our products."

He added that if the innovation was adopted by Famous Grouse, the product group would save over 2,160 tons of glass every year. And if this was rolled out across the whisky industry, it could save over 58,000 tons of glass annually.

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