Frugalpac sells world’s first paper bottle machine

British sustainable packaging company Frugalpac has secured the first customer for its paper bottle machine which makes the Frugal Bottle – the world’s first and only commercially available wine, spirits and olive oil bottle made from recycled paper.

Canadian packaging firm KinsBrae Packaging has agreed a deal to buy the first Frugal Bottle Assembly Machine – called FBAM-1 and install it in Canada.

Canada is already selling wine in the Frugal Bottle through its LCBO stores across Ontario. The wine in the Frugal Bottle, 3Q by award winning Italian winery Cantina Goccia, is proving to be very popular with Ontarian wine lovers who want to drink more sustainably.

Frugalpac’s CEO Malcolm Waugh announced the deal at the London Wine Fair, one of the largest wine fairs in the world – two years after launching the first Frugal Bottle in June 2020 with Cantina Goccia’s 3Q wine in the UK.

The FBAM-1 is capable of producing more than two and a half million Frugal Bottles a year.

Now over 25 different drinks producers from around the world have launched wines, spirits and olive oils in the Frugal Bottle.

They include The English Vine’s No1 white wine, Signal 7 Wines in the US, Spain’s Planet B by Bodegas Murviedro and a range of red, white and rosé wines from the UK’s leading provider of wine in alternative packaging, When In Rome.

It’s also used by NB Distillery’s School Night and Silent Pool’s Green Man for gin, a Mexican organic tequila Buen Vato from Sweden’s Alias Smith, a French Calvados from Avallen Spirits and Italy’s Evviva and Greece’s AONES for olive oil.

Future releases in the Frugal Bottle will include wines from Spanish producer Fernando Castro and a vodka from Organika.

KinsBrae Packaging, which is based in Cambridge, Ontario, will seek to meet the local Canadian and USA demand of the total global 120 million Frugal Bottles enquiries received by Frugalpac. This huge enquiry list is driven by the fact Frugal Bottles are made from 94% recycled paperboard, are five times lighter than a glass bottle and use 84% less carbon than glass.

Frugalpac also has strong enquiries from 87 other international brand, contract packing and packaging companies to buy Frugal Bottle Assembly Machines in the next few months and is calling on other firms to help them meet the ‘paper bottle revolution’ by investing in their own Frugal Bottle machines.

Frugalpac was recently praised by the UK Government’s Department for International Trade’s GREAT Britain campaign as one of the UK organisations “doing incredible things to help build a global sustainable future” in the run up to last year’s COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow.

The company’s vision is to place bottling machines in the heart of bottling plants, co-packers or packaging companies around the world to reduce the carbon footprint of its sustainable packaging even further – creating eco-friendly Frugal Bottle hubs around the world.

The Frugal Bottle is made from 94% recycled paperboard with a food grade pouch and offers 360-degree branding for exceptional shelf stand-out. Polling by Survation found that 63% of UK wine drinkers would buy wine in a paper bottle.