Carlsberg reaffirms commitment to wood fibre bottle

Carlsberg says it remains committed to its fibre bottle concept, more than three years after first showcasing the sustainable packaging design.

The brewer originally announced the prototype in mid-2022, describing a bottle made with a wood fibre exterior and an inner lining created from plant-based polyethylene furanoate (PEF). The PEF component is supplied by Avantium, a renewable-chemicals company based in Amsterdam. To date, Avantium has not been able to produce the material at commercial scale beyond the 8,000 pilot units made in 2022.

During a briefing with select media at Carlsberg’s headquarters in Copenhagen last week, Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, the company’s global head of sustainability and ESG, acknowledged that the project has not advanced as quickly as expected.

“In our initial announcement, we said we would need to wait for Avantium to complete construction of its plant,” he said. “That’s still the situation. The facility was planned to be operational in the fourth quarter but has now been pushed to the second quarter of next year.”

He noted that achieving the right barrier performance has been more challenging than anticipated. “It’s certainly not ideal that it’s taking so long, but if this were easy, it would already be done,” he added. “Without a functional, recyclable bio-based barrier, the paper bottle won’t meet the sustainability goals we’ve set.”

Boas Hoffmeyer attributed the holdup to both technological and financial hurdles. Avantium, he said, is still working to scale up as a start-up in a pioneering field. “This will be the first plant of its type anywhere. Once Avantium can produce PEF at scale, we can move forward with meaningful trials.”