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📦 How Baileys Paper-Based Bottle is Made
The packages were made by way of Dry Molded Fiber technology, invented by Sweden’s PulPac and covered by multiple patents. Completing the noteworthy package are an induction-sealed foil lid and a pressure-sensitive paper label with hot-stamped gold used for the gold double B symbol at the top of the bottle. The trial took place May 25- 26 at Time Out Fest in Barcelona, Spain, where 2,000 mini Baileys containers each holding 80 mL were made available to those who attended the food fest.
To understand why Dry Molded Fiber is potentially such a game changer it helps to point out that the tried and true method of forming fiber into packaging—think egg cartons, for example—involves considerable time, energy, and water. It begins with paper, typically recycled materials such as newspapers, paperboard, and other types of paper waste. These are pulped to break them down into individual fibers, and the pulp is then mixed with water to create a slurry. This slurry is poured into a mold designed to create a consistent shape and size for the egg cartons. Next is a press, which applies pressure to remove excess water from the pulp. Last comes drying to remove any remaining moisture.
This is a slow and resource-intensive process, one that Dry Molded Fiber technology is able to sidestep. PulPac claims that Dry Molded Fiber is 10 times faster than conventional wet molded fiber methods. Once it gets fully scaled up, say its backers, it will be a way of converting renewable plant fibers into fully recyclable packaging that can replace single-use plastic at a cost that is competitive. Other benefits include low energy use and almost no water demand in the molding process. This results in a package with strong sustainability credentials. Initial screening Life Cycle Assessment data for the Baileys bottle suggests it will have 25% lower CO2 emissions than the current rPET package.
Getting back to the Baileys test, which at 2,000 bottles was small in scale to say the least, the bottles were made at PA Consulting’s Global Innovation and Technology Centre in Cambridge, U.K. They were then transported to Ireland to be filled and induction sealed by the Baileys’ team at the filling site prior to shipment to the Barcelona test site. This was Diageo’s first consumer facing trial with paper-based bottles. It tested not only how the bottles traveled from Ireland to Barcelona, but also how consumers interacted with the material and how they understood the sustainability credentials of a paper bottle.
Here is where the manufacturing process veers from the bottle-making setup that produces the Baileys bottle. The web is fed back in the opposite direction so that the opposite side of the fluff pulp fiber can be sprayed with the same water mist and AKD sizing agent. Then a second paper tissue is applied to form a sandwich of paper, fluff pulp fiber, paper. Then, instead of cutting the roll-fed material into blanks as we saw in the bottle-making system, the roll feeds into a 24-cavity stamping press from SEYI. If cutlery is the item being made, 8 tons of pressure are applied and each tool is heated to 150 deg C. According to PulPac, that’s a notably modest amount of energy being consumed. Or suppose cup lids are being produced, like the ones shown above They can be formed 24 per cycle in 4 seconds. Also shown above is the tooling used for just such a job. Worth noting is that there is a silicone insert on the male side of the tooling that pushes towards the outer edges of the lid and helps it create an undercut that lets the lid snap tightly onto the cup.