Wine-bottle shortages and carbon footprints 19 July 2007

Does the environmentally friendly future lie in bottling  overseas ... or perhaps the papsak?

International carbon-footprint watchdogs taking note of the latest manoeuvrings to get South African wine into glass bottles may well kick up some dust – which could have a negative spin on export marketing.

Responding to a present bottle shortage of some 90 000 tons, the country’s near-monopoly producer, Consol Glass, has announced that it will have to import that amount of glass in the next nine months. The company has already imported 6.5 million bottles and is still running short on supply for local wine producers.

For South African wine exporters this means that their packaging is doing a double trip across the ocean. The distance travelled by wine in bottles caused a stir earlier this year in New Zealand when an article in a British newspaper suggested that people should buy products which don’t require large quantities of fuel to transport to market – thereby reducing the so-called ‘carbon footprint’. ‘Buy a bottle of French wine instead of a New Zealand vintage’ said the article, and gave the ‘monthly loss of carbon-dioxide as 0.068kg/bottle’. The New Zealand wine industry reacted in horror. The danger to Cape exports must be clear.

As supplier of some 75% of South Africa’s glass packaging, Consol has frequently been blamed for monopolistic imperatives in terms of pricing and available packaging.

Many producers would prefer to ship in bunk and bottle in Europe, but there can be major image and quality problems associated with wine not bottled and labelled in its country of origin. Given the increasing carbon-foot awareness, South African exports, even the fancy ones, may need to reconsider. The local glass supplier may too want to take note.

The advantages of plastic

Meanwhile, a Reuters article reports on some highly relevant preliminary research commissioned by the Waste and Resources Action Programme. The UK government-funded body is looking into the environmental implications of different types of wine packaging – including boxes and bags. Recycling glass is not always an answer, it seems, as the harmful greenhouse gases produced when recycling some types of glass can be worse than throwing the bottles away and producing new ones.

British supermarket Tesco is looking to import 200 000 ‘plastic wine pouches’ each containing two bottles worth of South African big-brand wine Arniston Bay, in mid-August. The pouches themselves cannot be easily recycled, but the exporter, the Company of Wine People, says the carbon footprint involved will be 80 percent smaller ‘because the lightweight packs use less energy to produce and transport’.