With a £1million investment, the founder of GUNNA Drinks has inaugurated a new aluminium bottling facility near Leicester. The 8,000 sq ft site is the first in the UK and Europe with the capabilities to bottle drinks in aluminium beyond water. As part of this move, GUNNA’s lemonades will be bottled at this facility, and it will also offer white label aluminium bottling to the broader industry, in line with the booming aluminium bottle market in the US, as seen via brands such as PepsiCo’s Proud Source Water.
Launching as The Sustainable Bottling Co., this step holds seismic positive environmental implications for the industry, due to the new ease and availability of aluminium bottling for drinks brands across Europe. Currently, around 70% of soft drinks are bottled in damaging single use plastic (SUP). The availability of infinitely recyclable aluminium bottling will significantly reduce the environmental impact of packaging for drinks brands.
The UK uses an average of 35.8 million plastic bottles every day, with only 19.8 million recycled. With only around 10% of everyday plastic getting recycled in the UK, the majority ends up being incinerated, going to landfill, or being sent abroad.
The Sustainable Bottling Co. will offer a range of aluminium bottle sizes, from 330ml to 750ml, providing a sustainable alternative to plastic bottles. Additionally, the resealable and reusable nature of the aluminium bottles makes them easy to enjoy on-the-go, further contributing to sustainability efforts in the food and drink packaging industry.
Melvin Jay, founder of The Sustainable Bottling Co. and GUNNA Drinks, emphasized the importance of sustainability, stating, “From both a personal and professional perspective, I’m a passionate advocate of sustainability and it’s something that’s been at the heart of the GUNNA Drinks brand for the last six years. So, it’s incredibly exciting to be launching The Sustainable Bottling Co. and be able to offer the industry access to significantly more planet-friendly bottling. We believe aluminium bottles are the future. We’ve put significant investment in place to bring this vision to life, and we know that sustainable packaging is something that brands, retailers and shoppers are all actively looking for. There are far-reaching needs across the FMCG industry for aluminium bottling, and we can’t wait to start fulfilling these and helping to reduce the drinks sector’s reliance on harmful single-use plastic bottles. The potential environmental ramifications here are huge and we’re excited to be able to make responsibly sourced and sustainable packaging more accessible.”
