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Sapporo turns heads with 'Shot Bottle'

It’s part can and part bottle, and marketers at Sapporo Breweries believe this reclosable aluminum bottle will bring new excitement to a premium brand of beer.

Although the lightweight, thin-walled bottle requires gentler handling than the glass bottles that Sapporo is accustomed to fill
Although the lightweight, thin-walled bottle requires gentler handling than the glass bottles that Sapporo is accustomed to fill

Sapporo Breweries of Tokyo is the first in the world to commercialize an unusual new package called the “bottle can” (see story on p. 150). The container was developed and produced by Daiwa Can (Tokyo, Japan).

Sapporo launched the 450-mL (15.2-oz) package for its premium Black Label brand in Tokyo last April. Airports, kiosks, sports arenas and other “grab-and-go” venues were key targets initially. There the bottles are sold individually. But supermarkets are also part of the distribution scheme, where bottles are sold in 24-count cases.

Why put beer in an aluminum bottle topped with an aluminum cap? Partly for novelty’s sake. A key demographic target is young people, who, Sapporo marketers believe, are always eager to try the newest package shape—especially young people in Japan. Sapporo says it calls the container the “Shot Bottle” because the word “shot” has a bold, invigorating sound that it feels will resonate with 20- and 30 somethings.

Novelty aside, this is Sapporo’s answer to the plastic bottles that U.S. and European beer marketers have introduced over the past two years (see packworld.com/go/beer). It gives consumers the shatter resistance, light weight and proven recyclability that makes the aluminum can so popular, yet it has a key advantage over the can: the mouth feel of a bottle. And unlike the can, which Sapporo believes is widely perceived as a commodity package with no value-added features, the aluminum bottle is reclosable.

But why didn’t Sapporo follow the lead of Bass, Heineken, Miller, Spendrup’s and other big brewers in the West? Why not achieve light weight, shatter resistance and reclosability by going to a plastic beer bottle?

The answer is that Sapporo finds three shortcomings in plastic bottles. First, no matter how exotic the barrier layers in a plastic bottle, it’s unlikely the bottle could ever match the impermeability of aluminum. Sapporo codes its aluminum bottles with a best-if-used-by date of nine months after the date of bottling. Beer in plastic bottles launched thus far can’t be dated beyond six months.

Second, plastic beer bottles are heavier. Daiwa Can estimates that a typical 500-mL plastic bottle for beer, including cap and label, weighs about 37 g. The aluminum bottle in the same size, including cap, weighs 24 g.

Third, while the monomaterial aluminum bottle is pre-eminently recyclable, right down to its 28-mm roll-on pilfer-proof cap, recycling a multimaterial plastic barrier bottle is not as simple. Also problematic is the plastic bottle’s closure because it introduces yet another material, typically polypropylene, into the stream of recyclables.

Developing the filling line

Filling the Shot Bottle required new equipment at Sapporo’s Shizuoka plant, located some 280 miles southwest of Tokyo. New rinsing, filling, capping and carrier-application equipment was added to depalletizing and case packing equipment that Sapporo also uses for cans. Rinsing and filling equipment was supplied by the Japanese manufacturer Shibuya, represented in the U.S. by Shibuya Intl. (Modesto, CA). The carrier applicator came from Riverwood Intl. (Atlanta, GA).

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