Packaging for Single-Serve Drinks
As the people start to drink more mindfully and healthily, single-serve packaging has become increasingly popular across various the whole beverage industry. However, putting quality drinks into single-serve formats brings unique challenges. From preserving flavour and quality to ensuring sustainability, every step in the process requires careful consideration.
1. Maintaining Quality and Freshness
One of the biggest challenges with single-serve packaging is ensuring that the wine maintains its quality and freshness until it’s enjoyed. Drinks are sensitive to oxygen, light, and temperature fluctuations, all of which can significantly impact their flavour and aromas. Unlike a traditional bottle with a cork or screw cap, single-serve containers expose a larger surface area relative to their volume. This exposure can increase the risk of oxidation, which can lead to undesirable changes in flavour.
To combat these issues, producers must use advanced packaging technologies, including airtight seals, UV-blocking materials, and inert gas fills. These measures help protect the drink from light and air exposure, preserving the original tasting profile. However, implementing these technologies can be complex and costly, which presents another layer of difficulty.
The very existence of a re-sealable closure adds immense complexity, as these have a significantly higher “Oxygen Transfer Rate” or OTR than the best packaging materials. The smaller the portion gets, the more critical it becomes to remove this high OTR component as it has a disproportionately high effect on the product’s shelf life.
Microbial contamination is another key component to preserving freshness. If, at any stage of the packing process, the drink is put into contact with any yeast or bacteria, this can reduce the shelf life from months to days, especially at room temperature.
2. Choosing the Right Materials
The choice of packaging material is crucial when it comes to single-serve drinks. Glass, which is traditional, is durable and effective at preserving quality but is also heavy, fragile, and less convenient for single servings. Alternative materials like plastic and aluminium are lighter and more portable, but they also pose challenges in preserving the wine’s taste and quality over time.
We’ve been told for many years that Oxygen is the enemy of wine, but it’s far more complex than that. Oxygen is an integral component of how a wine ages. It is actively required for wines with high levels of tannins and other phenolic compounds for them to evolve and form the delicious flavours we associate with older wines.
It turns out, also, that in the absence of enough Oxygen, wines can develop “reductive” flavours and aromas, hitting you in the face with sulphurous smells. This is the challenge for containers with ultra-low levels of oxygen, especially for red wines.
But not all drinks are designed for aging. And the amount of oxygen needed for a small portion is incredibly tiny – literally milligrams of oxygen.
ecoSIP carried out a benchmarking exercise to understand the right amount of oxygen needed to let the wine evolve at the same speed as if it were in a bottle with a cork.
But these are not the only considerations for the material: it’s really important to consider health. Not all materials are suitable for packaging alcohol or products with such high acidity of wine. Other products are not even suitable for packaging food of any type! Many flexible containers have been banned around the world for putting carcinogenic compounds and even toxic metals into the drinks they hold. It is critical to get validation that your container is free of anything which could damage the health of those who consume it.
3. Sustainability Considerations
Sustainability is a critical concern in packaging today. Many consumers seek environmentally-friendly options, yet the materials required for single-serve wine packages are often challenging to recycle. Small plastic containers, while convenient, may not be accepted by all recycling programs. But glass is also incredibly challenging to recycle into new containers. People talk circularity, but very few new glass containers are made of recycled glass; most old containers get crushed and used for sandblasting or roadbuilding. That’s really not recycling.
At the heart of the environmental footprint is the amount of material used, and the weight / size. Reducing this as much as possible is by far the most effective way to go.
Getting that down as much as possible while still preserving the drink is the holy grail. It’s Reduce > Reuse > Recycle in that order.
But let’s talk about recycling. There are two separate environmental problems we need to consider, and they’re both incredibly important. One is carbon going into the atmosphere; the other is waste going into the sea, the soil and the food chain.
Recycling flexible packaging doesn’t really reduce carbon emissions very much; when you consider the lifecycle end-to-end, there’s not much of a reduction vs producing no packaging. However, the most important thing is that recycling flexible packaging means its end-of-life process is managed responsibly. It doesn’t go into a river and into the ocean. It doesn’t go into landfill and become microplastics. Instead, it becomes new aluminium and plastic products and has a future life.
4. Cost Efficiency
Another significant challenge with single-serve drinks packaging is managing costs. The additional technology required to protect the beverage’s quality, combined with the materials often needed and the extra handling needed, will absolutely increase production costs. Additionally, the single-serve format requires more units, each with individual packaging, labels, and distribution costs, which can make it more expensive than traditional bulk options.
For producers, the challenge is balancing these costs while meeting consumer demand for affordable single-serve options. As the industry grows, economies of scale will help reduce expenses, but for now, cost efficiency remains a significant hurdle.
The ways that ecoSIP helps this is with:
Less material
Lower cost materials
Lower manufacturing costs
A single ecoSIP production line can produce hundreds of portions per minute in a small factory, with little interaction needed, meaning it’s a lean, mean manufacturing machine.
Around the world, taxes are increasing on packaging waste. Single-serve is often seen as being less efficient than a larger package like bottle, but with ecoSIP, that’s just not true. We can pack up the same 750ml of beverage into six individual portions, using less than 20 grams of film, plus a simple card carton, vs around 500-1000g for a glass bottle. That can reduce taxes such as the UK’s EPR (Enhanced Producer Responsibility) by more than 80%.
5. Consumer Perception and Experience
Finally, there’s the challenge of consumer perception. Many wine enthusiasts appreciate the tradition of opening a full-sized bottle and may be skeptical of the quality of wine in single-serve formats. Producers must work to dispel any preconceived notions and prove that their single-serve wines are just as high-quality as those found in full-size bottles.
Packaging designers must find ways to recreate that experience in a single-serving format that feels both premium and enjoyable.
Part of the problem is that alternative packaging has had compromises and, while it has dramatically improved these days, many are still less suitable for certain styles of wine. A feedback loop of wineries putting only the cheapest wine into alternative formats has meant that the consumers associate cans and bag-in-box with lower-quality wines.
Adopting a completely new format, such as ecoSIP, gives the chance to drop some of that baggage. The outer carton, while optional, greatly enhances consumer experience, both making it easier to pour the product, but also presenting a fantastic canvas for branding, using premium finishes and high-quality photographic-quality printing and QR codes.
And consumers love the variety that is possible with a multi-pack, letting them pick wines which go with what they are eating, or even just the mood they are in at that particular moment!
Put simply, ecoSIP looks like nothing else on the market and stands out significantly on the shelf.
Embracing the Future of Innovation
ecoSIP Single-Serve packaging offers exciting possibilities for wine and other fragile beverages. As more consumers seek convenience and portion control, the demand will almost certainly continue to grow. With the advances in technology, material science, processing and design, ecoSIP unveils a future where single-serve packaging meets the highest standards of quality, sustainability, and affordability, and is suitable for even the highest quality drinks.
We’re committed to leading the way in this innovative space. By tackling these challenges head-on, we aim to provide our customers with a premium single-serve experience that doesn’t compromise — one glass at a time!