Flexible Pouches V.S. Glass Bottles for Beverage Packaging
There are many factors you need to consider when determining flexible pouches or glass bottles as your beverage packaging. Glass bottles have been used in beverage packaging for hundreds of years. On the other hand, flexible pouches are demonstrating rapid growth in beverage packaging industry. Both flexible pouches and glass bottles have their advantages and disadvantages.
Glass is completely recyclable, but its carbon footprint is much high than flexible pouch. Most of flexible pouch cannot recycle, but it has lower transportation cost and carbon footprint. You may choose one of the packaging materials instead of the other one for many reasons, but which is a perfect choice to meet your requirements for beverage packaging?
Today, we are going to compare the flexible pouches with glass bottles for beverage packaging applications. After reading, you will have a clear idea of which packaging material you want.
Flexible pouches or glass bottles？Which is right for you？
You have lots of choices for the beverage packaging,including plastic bottles, glass bottles, flexible pouches or other packaging containers. However, the most popular packaging materials are flexible pouches and glass bottles in nowadays. Both have their pros and cons. Some applications are more appropriate to one than the other one. But which type of these materials is best for your beverage packaging? Now we will review both of the packaging materials above.
Beverage Flexible Pouches
Flexible pouches are one of the rapidest growth packaging materials at present. They have achieved a sharp rise in popularity in the past ten years. That’s because they are lightweight, cheaper to ship, breakage-proof, and take up less space in the truck, warehouse and landfill, compared to other popular packaging materials.
Flexible pouches have replaced lots of packaging materials for various packaging applications, including food, industrial liquid and powders, as well as other consumer packaging. Flexible pouches are made from different types of plastic structures, and are mostly non-recyclable. But their carbon footprint is significantly less than other current substitute materials, such as glass, cardboard, paperboard, rigid plastic and other packaging materials.
Most companies have used flexible pouches for a variety of food packaging applications. And, flexible pouches have became very popular as a substitute materials of glass bottles. Especially for beverage, we are talking about spout pouches.
Spout Pouches for Beverage Packaging
There are different kinds of flexible pouches, including stand-up pouch, bottom gusseted pouch, side gusseted pouch, valved gusseted pouch and pillow pouch. But, most beverage companies prefer to use spout pouches for their beverage packaging.
Spout pouch is a kind of flexible packaging, that may or may not have bottom gussets. Generally speaking, there’s a spout on top of the pouch, that make it different from other flexible pouch. The spout has a corkscrew texture and a removable cap to be removed and then re-closed. Since the spout pouch can be resealed, you can keep the remain beverage if you couldn't drink it all after your first open.
These spout pouches are well received by consumers for many reasons. One of them is that spout pouch has strong resistance to breakage and crushing, different from glass. If you drop one to the ground carelessly, the packaging and product inside can both stay in good conditions, and you can continue to enjoy it. Plus, spout pouch can offer more room for color printing, increasing your branding and catching customers’ eyes.
Spout pouch is much lighter than other current beverage packaging materials, reducing lots of transportation cost. In most cases, spout pouch is non-recyclable, but its carbon footprint is much lower than others’.
Glass Bottles for Beverage Packaging
For over a hundred years, glass bottle has always been a popular materials for beverage packaging. Thanks to its luxury senses, it is still well-revived by many customers even to this day. Glass bottle is 100% recyclable and the consumers is available to see the beverage inside. Glass bottles may be branded with full-color labels or printed directly onto the glass. What’s more, Glass bottles are a reflective surface that nicely reflects lights in retail settings and catch consumers’ eyes easily. Lots of consumers would choose glass bottle when they buy the beverage in supermarket, gas station, pharmacy or other retail stores.
But, glass bottle is one of the heavies packaging materials, its transportation cost is much more than flexible pouch. And the glass bottles are easy to break and damage when shipping or falling. In that case, they may be a potential risk. Although glass bottles is 100% full recyclable, it is also one of the highest carbon footprint of all packaging materials. This high carbon footprint basically offsets all its benefits of recycle.
Which is right for you? Flexible pouches or glass bottles?
In order to confirm the right beverage packaging solutions for your needs, whether flexible pouches or glass bottles, you have to answer a few questions.
Are you looking for a recyclable beverage packaging? - if you say YES, then glass bottle is the best choice.
Are you looking for a beverage packaging with high crushing strength? - if you agree, flexible pouch is right for you.
Are you looking for a luxurious beverage packaging? - If you answer YES, then glass bottle is your choice.
Are you looking for a beverage packaging with a low carbon footprint? - If you say YES, then flexible pouch meets your needs.
Are you looking for a traditional beverage packaging? - If you answer YES, then glass bottle is better choice.
Are you expecting to cut the transportation cost? - If YES is the answer, flexible pouch should be better.
Where can you buy the flexible pouches or glass bottles?
After reading above, you should know more about which kind of beverage packaging is right for you. Will you choose flexible pouch? If you are interested in the quotation of flexible pouches, please feel free to contact us. We are going to provide you with right flexible beverage packaging solutions. On the other hand, we cannot help you anymore if you choose glass bottles.
