Packaging innovation

The practicality of products has always been a priority field of innovation for Nestlé Waters and allows the consumer to stay hydrated whenever and wherever. In 1968, Vittel launched the first plastic bottle made of PVC in France to replace glass bottles and 20 years later launched the first sport’s cap on the market. In the early 1990s, Valvert was one of the first European brands to move to a new material that was sturdier, more transparent and more easily compacted: PET plastic. This brand now uses 25% recycled PET in its bottles.

Our packaging is constantly changing in order to be always higher performance and move with you through your busy life; they’re lighter and more ecological of course, but also easier to handle, with better grip, more functional caps adapted for sports or driving, and more fun too, to help parents teach their children to learn to love water from an early age.

Today, PTC Water is concentrating its efforts on reducing the weight of packaging. The newest technology in computer assisted product modelling and the progress made in materials, plus the choice of our suppliers, have helped the company significantly reduce the weight of PET used in our bottles.

In the United States for example, Nestlé Waters has patented its new Eco-Shape bottle, which uses only 12.4 grams of PET resin to make a 500 ml bottle. This extremely light bottle is now the market reference in North America.

Whether they’re intended to be more ecological or simply more practical, new bottle prototypes can be developed entirely on the PTC Water site and then tested there, too. In fact, PTC Water has developed its own pilot plant to develop packaging and product prototypes. This pilot-plant is equipped with all kinds of pilot-scale machines to reproduce the various processes of bottle production from the preform injection and blowing to the multi-pack shrink and pallet wrapping. By mid 2009, the pilot plant will even be equipped with a fully automatic platform to simulate all types of transportation.

Besides its pilot-plant, PTC Water also has a top-level equipment laboratory solely for packaging. Nearly 40 different appliances perform 70 different protocol tests on primary (performance, bottles, closures), secondary (plastic wrap, boxes) and tertiary packaging (pallets): dimension, weight, colorimetry, thermal stability, permeability, pressure, top load, cap opening torque, etc.

Nestlé Waters is also taking a firm position on next generation bottles to study the sanitary and operational qualities of alternative materials (bioplastics, cellulose, PLA, etc.). Developing these technologies to a usable state, so that they meet the quality standards for our manufacturing is a priority in our research.