Praise for Ribena’s bottle ‘innovation’

IT may look like an ordinary bottle, but it took two years and £1.6 million to perfect and has been praised by the Government, which wants the rest of the soft drinks industry to do the same.

Gloucestershire’s Ribena factory has been widely praised for leading the way after becoming the largest UK brand to make sure its plastic bottles are 100 per cent recyclable.

The company was the first to use 100 per cent recycled bottles but was told the large dark label covering the old Ribena bottle made it difficult for sensors at recycling plants to identify that it could be used again.

It set up a project to reduce the size of the label while making sure the extra exposure to light did not affect the taste of the blackcurrant drink.

And this new, retro-shaped plastic bottle – which looks as if it made of glass – is the result.

Two years later, the new bottle can go into production at Coleford in the Forest of Dean, and environmentalists are urging other drink companies to follow the example of Ribena, which is owned by Japanese firm Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I. They say the industry needs to do more because only 18 per cent of PET recycled drinks bottles across Europe are actually turned back into bottles again.

The move will save 202 tonnes of plastic per year and Environment Minister Rebecca Pow said: “It is this kind of innovation that we want to see to create a more circular economy for our waste and resources, with more materials being recycled and reused and less being consigned to landfill or incineration.”