Recently, the international market research institution Research and Markets released an analysis report on the global alcohol and beverage market from 2024 to 2032. The report indicates that the market is expected to experience strong expansion during the forecast period, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.02%. According to the report, the potential growth of the market is mainly due to several factors, including population growth, increased disposable income, changing consumer behavior, and worsening environmental issues, which will affect production and consumption patterns in the industry, drive demand, and encourage manufacturers to innovate responsibly.

Among them, the report emphasizes that "consumer preferences are changing rapidly." This trend is manifested in a clearer pursuit of premium products by consumers, especially in the spirit category. At the same time, health-conscious consumers are calling for more sustainable alternatives and paying more attention to eco-friendly packaging. In fact, spirit brands have already responded positively to this sustainable trend in the market.

Starting from the bottle, promoting the concept of sustainable packaging.

The use of alcoholic beverages is closely related to glass bottles. In terms of bottling glass for products, more and more spirit groups and their brands have begun to join the glass recycling queue, catering to consumers' demand for eco-friendly packaging while fulfilling the sustainable commitments made by their companies.

Earlier this year, the Remy Cointreau Group's single malt Scotch whisky brand Bruichladdich launched two new creations – Bruichladdich 18-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky and Bruichladdich 30-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky, which use a new patented bottle design with a 60% recycled glass content; at the same time, for the product packaging, the paper-plastic gift box materials are made from recyclable sugarcane pulp and bamboo pulp to meet eco-friendly requirements of being pollutant-free and biodegradable.

Left: Bruichladdich 18-Year-Old & 30-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky Right: Talisker Single Malt Whisky Eco-friendly Theme Limited Edition Image source: Bruichladdich, Talisker.

Similarly, Diageo's Talisker Single Malt Whisky launched its "Born from the Sea" eco-friendly theme limited edition last year, which features bottles made from 100% recycled glass for the first time and adopts a no-box packaging design, further interpreting the concept of sustainable packaging. It is worth mentioning that this new eco-friendly bottle is the first product collaboration of the spirit brand since it reached a long-term environmental protection agreement with the international marine conservation organization Parley for the Oceans in 2020.

In addition to the product side, the Spirit Group is also actively promoting the long-term development of Glass recycling and reuse from the value chain. Starting in 2023, Bacardi China has partnered with Shanghai Yanlong Resource Utilization Co., Ltd. to conduct innovative explorations and pilot projects in the field of Glass recycling and reuse, and announced the preliminary results of the pilot projects on this year's World Environment Day (June 5): within less than a year of the pilot period in Shanghai and Harbin, they jointly managed to achieve an incremental recovery of 4,200 tons of recycled Glass, equivalent to 8.4 million 500-gram wine bottles recycled.

Bacardi China and its partner companies are innovatively exploring Glass recycling and reuse, attempting to separate waste Glass from furnace slag. Image source: Bacardi China.

Meanwhile, design solutions for wine bottles primarily using alternative materials are continuously being introduced to explore more possibilities for Eco-friendly Concept wine bottles. In 2022, Bacardi's Scotch whisky brand Royal Salute launched new packaging for its classic Royal Salute 21 Year (70CL) Glass bottle, gradually replacing the previous iconic ceramic bottle with a new coated Glass bottle. This marks the first time Royal Salute has introduced Eco-friendly Concept packaging, in response to an important sustainability commitment made by the group, which states that by 2025, all brands under the group will have product packaging that is recyclable, biodegradable, reusable, and can be bio-based. According to official information, compared to ceramic, a coated Glass bottle uses a production process with lower energy intensity, reducing carbon footprint by over 70% during the product packaging process, and Glass materials are also more easily recyclable.

The Royal Salute 21 Year (70CL) using coated Glass bottles. Image source: Royal Salute.

Notably, the lightweight design of Glass wine bottles is also a major trend in Eco-friendly Concept packaging practices. Currently, Bacardi's cognac brand Martell focuses on lighter materials and design solutions in product packaging, while also choosing recyclable and sustainable materials for packaging boxes and labels to reduce carbon emissions from packaging.

Focusing on food waste, paying attention to the issue of food waste.

While emphasizing the Eco-friendly Concept of wine bottles, some emerging Spirit brands are starting to focus on the raw materials of the spirits to reduce food waste. They utilize food leftovers to launch sustainable alternatives to spirits. Founded in 2018, the United Kingdom Spirit brand Penrhos Spirits is one of the practitioners. The brand's founders are two gin enthusiasts passionate about field farming, who use fruits grown on their own farms and orchards to brew unique flavored gin.

Penrhos Spirits offers Spirit products packaged in 100% recycled Aluminum bottles. Image source: Penrhos Spirits.

Harriet Williams, the sales director of the Penrhos brand, pointed out that unsold fruits are often not fully utilized and can only be treated as waste. According to reports from the United Kingdom's renowned spirit media outlet, The Spirits Business, due to concerns over this waste phenomenon, the brand is currently reducing its own planting scale and repurposing unsold crops from nearby farms as brewing materials.

Another brand dedicated to solving waste issues is Discarded Spirits, a sustainable spirit brand under the independent distiller William Grant & Sons, established in 2018. The company is committed to utilizing food waste materials and brewing spirits without compromising taste and quality. Currently, the brand has launched three spirit products, including a sweet vermouth made from coffee fruit skins (the discarded fruit of coffee berries), rum produced from discarded banana peels, and vodka made from grape waste.

Images of the three spirits launched by the sustainable spirit brand Discarded Spirits, aimed at addressing food waste issues: Source: Discarded Spirits.

There are also two other sustainable spirit brands established in 2018, Sapling Spirits and Wheyward Spirits. Sapling Spirits' fruit-flavored vodka made from natural raspberries and hibiscus, launched last year, is based on fighting food waste issues, while Wheyward Spirits focuses on brewing spirit products using whey leftover from cheese production. Additionally, Foxhole Spirits, a sustainable gin brand founded in 2016, produces its main product HYKE from unsold grapes recovered from the supermarket supply chain. The London-based distillery Hayman's launched a sustainable vodka named "Respirited" in 2022, made from re-distilled grain spirits recovered during production.

The outdoor advertisement for the sustainable vodka Respirited launched this year features the slogan "This Vodka is Rubbish" as its promotional phrase. Source: thespiritsbusiness.

However, despite these emerging sustainable brands aiming to tackle food waste issues, The Spirits Business mentioned in an article titled "Waste not, want not: the rise of discarded spirits" that one significant obstacle faced by these spirit brands, which focus on food waste as brewing material, is consumer perception, as people hold the view of “garbage in, garbage out.” In reality, these food wastes usually refer to oversized, misshapen, or excess unsold agricultural products, or the "trimmings" leftover from crops after processing in the supply chain.

Meanwhile, for these spirit manufacturers and brands, producing spirits using leftover or discarded materials also faces challenges. Sam Trevethyen, the global brand ambassador for Discarded Spirits, pointed out that using "materials that are not handpicked, processed and fully meet our requirements" can complicate common production issues, as "essentially, these are things that some people no longer need, which increases the difficulty of (processing standards) consistency." Nevertheless, Trevethyen also stated, "We want to tell consumers that when you begin to look at waste in a different way, and when you start to be creative, you can still do something."

Image source: wineenthusiast.com/ Joel Goldberg. Image sourced from the internet, copyright belongs to the original author.