Infini is part of Nampak Plastics' drive to reduce its own carbon footprint and also provides its customers with the opportunity to respond to environmental impact pressures while making a contribution to cost savings.
The new infini bottle has been specifically designed to be lightweighted and its launch coincides with the increased focus on the carbon impact of grocery packaging in Courtauld Commitment 2. Nampak's total production of milk bottles - currently 2 billion per annum - will move to the new lightweighted design over the next few years but the first innovative Infini bottles will be in the market by the summer of 2011.
The key objective in designing the bottle was to reduce the weight of materials used in its production without affecting the bottle's integrity and its requirement to be 'fit for purpose'.
The innovative lightweight Infini bottle is already demonstrating significant success and the 4 pint bottle has been available in-store through a number of UK retailers.
We have had a strong interest in licensing opportunities for the Infini concept from overseas customers and the company is currently in discussion with major dairies in the US and Australia. To maximise the potential of this exciting expansion for Nampak Plastics it has appointed Isis Innovation - a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Oxford - to further market the Infini patent outside the UK.
We have received extremely positive feedback throughout the market on a number of fronts with the environmental benefits of the Infini design coming through very strongly. Infini was initially developed by Nampak's dedicated innovation team, with subsequent input from Nampak's key customers, to further develop this ultra-lightweight bottle. From the feedback Nampak has received, it is proving to be the paradigm shift the market needed.
The Infini bottle design offers an average of 15% weight saving across the range with specific bottle sizes achieving weight reductions as much as 21%, whilst at the same time continuing to meet Nampak customers' current performance specifications.
The bottle's innovative design was selected as the optimum solution to the lightweighting challenge and the HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) Infini bottle is 100% recyclable. Consumers can recycle it in exactly the same way as the current standard bottle. The Infini bottle currently contains over 10% recycled material (rHDPE) with a target of up to 50% by 2020.
www.inifinibottle.com