Long time wine packaging pro's Dave Hammond (formerly of Encore! and others) and Neil Foster (M.A. Silva closures) have partnered up to form Vertical Glass and Packaging. Their goal is to provide superior logistics for packaging supply.

From the North Bay Business Journal:

"SANTA ROSA — North Coast vintners have a new option for purchasing bottles and packaging.

Vertical Glass & Packaging of Santa Rosa is a venture by Neil Foster, president and owner of cork distributor M.A. Silva Corks USA of Santa Rosa, and David Hammond, who has been a wine packaging marketer locally for several years and is president of Vertical.

“Today’s packaging suppliers are facing more and more challenges to meet the increasing demands of bottling operations,” Mr. Foster said.

One of the services the wine packaging startup is touting, in addition to supply parameters for high-speed lines and aesthetic quality, is just-in-time ordering from glass plants in China and North America.

“If effective delivery times change from wineries, we change accordingly,” Mr. Hammond said. “We’re manufacturing, shipping and delivering on a schedule exposed to the customer base.”

That includes a system for allowing customers to track the delivery schedule from the time of ordering until arrival at the bottling facility.

Some wineries have been adjusting their bottling schedules because of slower depletions in certain markets since economic conditions started worsening in 2008.

Wine packaging suppliers have told the Business Journal that changes in the size of orders and delivery schedule have challenged cash flow and inventory management.

Vertical Glass & Packaging has contract warehousing in Benicia for bottles and packaging materials such as boxes, partitions and recycled cardboard bottle shippers. Offices are in the M.A. Silva Corks USA facility in north Santa Rosa, but Vertical isn’t connected to that company, which distributes stoppers for M.A. Silva Corticas of Portugal."

Winebusiness.com adds some more detail:

"An Industry First: According to Hammond, his firm’s vertically integrated scheduling and delivery is an industry first. “We developed our order scheduling and logistics capabilities upon the evolving needs of wineries,” he said. “Like other industries, wine bottling has become a just-in-time operation. Inventoried glass and packaging consumes valuable warehouse space and employee attention. Our goal is to seamlessly interface our delivery with a winery’s bottling schedule, and provide error free shipping, competitive pricing and the strictest quality standards."

Wine Intelligence has a new report out on the emerging wine drinkers in China. They know that imported wines are better, but are confused about what to buy so they stick with local, inferior wines. I think there is a tremendous opportunity here to develop labels that speak to the Chinese consumer. With 80 million potential buyers by 2025, large (and even small premium wineries) should be focusing on developing Chinese specific brands for export. Labels that are a mix of classic U.S. but with very specific hooks for the Chinese.

Wine Intelligence is selling the 150 page report for £3,500.

Read the full release here: Chinese consumers “waking up” to imported wine – but find it difficult to understand.

Let's see, you are on a plane, you order the house red, you get your glass and it smells like TCA, how could that be, it came out of a little plastic bottle with a screw cap, no cork in sight. Wait, could it be coming from the plane?

Over two years in the works, Rio Tinto has finally completed the sale of the packaging portion of Alcan to Amcor.

More from The New York Times Deal Book:

"Rio Tinto said Tuesday has completed the almost $2 billion sale of some divisions of its Alcan business to Amcor, taking another step toward cutting its debt load.

The London-based mining giant announced in December it would accept Australian packaging company Amcor’s offer to buy Alcan Packaging’s pharmaceuticals, tobacco and food divisions in Europe and Asia, The Associated Press writes.

Rio Tinto has sold some $10.3 billion in assets since February 2008 to help pay off significant debt it built up buying Canadian aluminum giant Alcan for $38 billion in 2007. Selling non-core Alcan assets, such as the packaging operation, has been a key part of the debt strategy.

”The completion of this complex transaction is another significant step in the recapitalization of our balance sheet,” Rio Tinto’s chief financial officer Guy Elliott said in a statement."

How does this relate to wine packaging? Alcan, producers of Stelvin, is one of the leading wine screw cap manufacturers in the world.

Full press release from Rio Tinto:

Rio Tinto completes sale of majority of Alcan Packaging businesses to Amcor for US$1,948 million

Rio Tinto announced today that it completed the sale of Alcan Packaging global Pharmaceuticals, global Tobacco, Food Europe and Food Asia divisions to Amcor for a total consideration of US$1,948 million , on 1 February.

Guy Elliott, chief financial officer, Rio Tinto, said “The completion of this complex transaction is another significant step in the recapitalisation of our balance sheet. Since the start of 2009 we have completed divestments of US$5.6 billion despite a difficult environment created by the global financial crisis. These proceeds, together with the proceeds from our successful rights issues and strong underlying cash flows, provide us with the flexibility to pursue value adding investment opportunities as they arise.”

Rio Tinto announced on 18 August 2009 the receipt of a binding offer from Amcor for these businesses for a total consideration of US$2,025 million. Today’s completion excludes the Alcan Packaging Medical Flexibles operations in the US. The sale of these operations is the subject of an ongoing detailed market review by the US Department of Justice. The consideration has been adjusted to exclude the Medical Flexibles operations and to reflect the actual business performance over the past six months. The final consideration remains subject to certain customary post-close adjustments.

Since February 2008, Rio Tinto has announced asset sales of US$10.3 billion. In 2008, Rio Tinto completed divestments totalling US$3.1 billion. In 2009, Rio Tinto agreed asset sales of US$7.2 billion and completed US$3.6 billion of these. Completed transactions in 2009 include Ningxia (aluminium), Potasio Rio Colorado (potash), Corumbá (iron ore), Jacobs Ranch (coal), Alcan Composites and the Cloud Peak IPO.

Agreed sales yet to complete include Alcan Packaging Food Americas and Maules Creek (Coal & Allied).

Closing consideration represents the initial $2,025 million consideration reduced for the deferred sale of the Medical Flexible business ($65 million), increased for the EBITDA adjustment ($65 million) and reduced for other transaction adjustments, mainly working capital ($77 million).

About Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the UK, combining Rio Tinto plc, a London and NYSE listed company, and Rio Tinto Limited, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

Rio Tinto's business is finding, mining, and processing mineral resources. Major products are aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc) and iron ore. Activities span the world but are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant businesses in South America, Asia, Europe and southern Africa.

Two days didn't feel like enough to check out all of the great wine packaging suppliers at the 2010 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, but I did my best, and here are five that piqued my interest.

Amorim's ReCork America program continues to expand, this time into Washington State.

The Green Glass Company, out of Wisconsin is taking a packaged wine and making it a wine package (so to speak).

Ran across them while looking at what wineries are doing to recycle & reuse. Seems they take discarded bottles, of all types, and transform them into goblets, glasses, vases and more. They've got a patented process especially for wine bottles. Very cool.

From their website:

With origins dating back to 1992 in South Africa, The Green Glass Company has seen many incarnations and has grown into the largest producer of reclaimed glassware in the world.

The Green Glass Company strives to satisfy not only its recycling heritage but also its eclectic and diverse clientele.   With its patent on the unique wine bottle to goblet conversion process, The Green Glass Company team and its state-of-the-art equipment are at the forefront of the reclaimed glassware market.

Revered throughout Europe and other parts of the world as collectable art glass, The Green Glass Company goblets have even been chosen for the table of King Carlos of Spain, a former Mayor of New York City, movie sets, and, celebrity dinners. In addition to their popularity with consumers and collectors, The Green Glass Company products are quickly becoming a valuable marketing tool in the corporate world. Sandblasted with a company name or logo, the glasses not only provide enduring brand exposure, they also provide insight into a company’s awareness and commitment to preserving our resources.

The increasing popularity of reclaimed and recycled products will continue to fuel the forward momentum of The Green Glass Company.   The introduction of new product lines and innovative designs will ensure that the company continues to be viewed as the pioneer in reclaimed glassware.

The Green Glass Company challenges everyone to push beyond the average, strive to make a difference, thrive on creativity – and promises to do the same.

It is simple, yet imaginative.

It is conceptually elementary, yet technologically complex.

It is an ordinary bottle, yet an extraordinary drinking glass.   Cheers.

Getting some good press is a company I hope does well, Wine Bottle Recycling (A+ for name matching function). They are trying to adopt the European (and worldwide) model for wine bottle reuse in the US.

From Mother Nature Network:

Wine Bottle Recycling is the idea of Bruce Stephens, a home wine maker, who had one of those middle of the night epiphanies. He did some research and found out some interesting and disheartening statistics about used wine bottles.

• Seven out of 10 wine bottles in the United States end up in landfill.

• The U.S. is one of the few nations that does not collect and reuse their bottles on a large scale.

• In Europe, most wine bottles are used an average eight times before they are discarded.

• 60 percent of a wine bottle’s carbon footprint comes from the creation of the bottle.

• The energy it requires to melt the glass in the recycling process, along with the amount of broken glass that doesn’t get recycled, makes the recycling of glass bottles a lot less environmentally friendly than many people think it is.

From Recordnet.com:

While there are 40 to 50 such bottle-washing operations in Europe, the Stockton facility will be the only one in the United States, said Bruce Stephens, Wine Bottle Recycling's chief executive and "chief bottle washer."

It's a great location, Stephens told a Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce Green Team San Joaquin meeting Wednesday.

California wineries produce about 300 million cases of wine a year or, at the standard 750-milliliter bottle size, 3.6 billion bottles. And 70 percent of that production is in the San Joaquin Valley from Lodi to Madera.

"This is where all the bottles are," he told the gathering of more than 50 people.

Initially, his company will receive unwanted bottles from the large-scale wineries - glass being discarded as excess or, perhaps, because of package changes or mislabeling.

Eventually, Stephens hopes to establish a post-consumer collection system for wine bottles, offering to pay for discards at "bottle shacks" or from waste-hauling companies.

Bohemian (a great independent newspaper from my neck of the woods) has the full scoop.

Matt Kramer, one of my favorite Spectator columnists, has an interesting idea for interacting with the consumer. He decries the fact that most wines offer nothing substantial at point-of-purchase. They don't offer any stories, nothing to connect with the potential buyer. He is realistic, though, he understands that with the small space a label has to offer, there really isn't much that can be done. He doesn't have the perfect solution, but his first take--maybe something as simple as a dedicated phone line on the label where a buyer can hear a recorded message--would be better than what is currently out there.

The article is worth a read:

Killer Wine App

Radio New Zealand has a piece about Yealands Estates winery (cool website, by the way) in Marlborough, NZ taking a portion of its produciton to plastic bottles.

From the article:

Yealands Estate in Marlborough has just filled its first batch of sauvignon blanc in plastic bottles, which will appear on store shelves in about a week.

It believes it is the first time a New Zealand winemaker has used plastic bottles for wine and says the process is safe.

Yealands Estate owner Peter Yealand says about 10% of his sauvignon blanc will be sold in plastic bottles within the next two years.

He says the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles weigh just 50g compared with a 500g glass bottle, which makes it better for the environment.

"I'm aiming to be the most sustainable wine producer in the world, and as part of our goal we look at ways that we can move towards achieving that."

Mr Yealand says a lot of energy is wasted moving heavy weight glass throughout New Zealand and worldwide.

He believes the plastic bottles also offers practical benefits for festival-goers and campers.

The bottles will have an 18-month best-by date, as oxygen could spoil the wine. They are not biodegradable, but can be recycled.

Wine critic Keith Stewart says selling wine in plastic bottles is commendable, as long as it is safe for people's health and the environment.