Flat wine and water bottles that fit through your letterbox

Wine bottles that you can put straight through the letter box. This is the innovative packaging result of a cooperation between two British companies. The slimline bottles with screw caps by Garçon Wines are made out of 100 percent recycled PET and are 32 centimetres high – a good two centimetres more than conventional wine bottles. This ensures that the bottles still have a volume of 750 millilitres, despite their flat shape. The plastic material can be recycled completely. They take up around 40 percent less space compared to traditional wine bottles and weigh around 63 grams, a whopping 87 percent less than their round, glass competitors.

The online wine dealer Naked Wines offers the letterbox-friendly wine bottles are to their subscribersfor a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon / Carmenere mix. If this offer proves to be successful, other wines in flat bottles are expected to be added to the offer and thus simplify sending wines to the online shop’s subscribers. They no longer need to be at home to accept their package, as it fits through conventional letterboxes.

In addition to their cooperation with Naked Wines, Garçon Wines have also joined forces with British packaging manufacturer DS Smith. Together, they developed packaging that can hold eight upright, flat PET bottles and two more lying across the top of the bottle necks. They call it the “10 Flat Bottle Case”. This saves around 55 percent space compared to conventional 75 cl glass bottles. However, this box no longer fits through a letterbox.

Whilst 456 round bottles can currently be stacked on standard pallets, the new 10 Flat Bottle Case promises transportation of 1,040 bottles on a single pallet. This means 2.28 times as much wine whilst simultaneously saving costs for packaging, transport and storage.

Flat packaging is not only used for wine, but also for water. The “memobottle” was developed by the Australian start-up of the same name and its design is based on notebooks and magazines. The project was realised thanks to crowdfunding. The memobottle is based on the conventional international paper formats A4, A5 and A6 and can hold 1,250, 750 and 375 millilitres respectively. The flat water bottles are smooth and transparent and are delivered with one white and one black lid. On request, customers can personalise their packaging with a transparent or pink lid.

These robust beverage bottles are made of Tritan® BPA-free plastic, are reusable and recyclable. Optically, the bottles are reminiscent of a piece of paper and fit next to laptops and books in any bag. They are leak-proof and should be cleaned at a maximum water temperature of 50°C, according to the manufacturer. For each purchased memobottle, one US dollar is donated to Water.org. This provides people in need with clean drinking water for two months per bottle sold.