Success in the London Packaging Week 2025 Innovation Awards was about more than proof of concept for PA Consulting, PulPac, and Diageo.
It showed the real potential in fibre-based drinks packaging. For many years it has been used in bags, boxes, and cartons and now bottles are being explored.
Fibre-based packaging has long been seen as essential to the future of the packaging industry.
It is a readily available, highly recyclable, and easily regenerated material.
However, the porous nature and hygroscopic tendency of fibres have largely limited the use of paper-based packaging to secondary packaging applications (cosmetics and cereal display boxes, etc) or even tertiary packaging formats (shelf-ready, delivery).
That is, until now. With consumers demanding more sustainable packaging choices and brands needing to respond, the material supply chain has been working hard to make paper-based packaging more usable for a wider range of applications.
This was realised at the London Packaging Week Innovation Awards, with PA Consulting, PulPac, and Diageo lauded in the Sustainable Packaging Innovation category for their ongoing work to develop a lower-carbon, fully recyclable paper packaging for drinks.
Betting big on fibre-based bottles
Bottles are one obvious area where the gains to be made can be substantial. When made from glass, bottles can be energy-intensive to produce, weighty to transport and store, and in some circumstances cumbersome to handle.
In favour of glass is its full recyclability and ability to be reused multiple times without loss in quality or purity. There are also ongoing efforts to lightweight glass. Having said that, paper is the most commonly and widely recycled packaging material in Europe. Well-established recovery streams and ingrained consumer behaviour mean collection rates for paper-based packaging regularly achieve high double-figures.
If a way to make paper suitable for use with liquids existed, this would surely move the needle a long way in the right direction towards sustainable and circular packaging.
Enter PulPac and PA Consulting.
Back in 2023, the two businesses launched the Bottle Collective, of which Diageo is a founding member. One of the goals of the collective is to create a fibre bottle alternative to help minimise the use of single-use plastic bottles in food, drink, consumer health, and FMCG industries.
This was centred on PulPac’s Dry Molded Fiber technology and uses renewable pulp and cellulose resources to produce low-cost, high-performance fibre-based packaging. The patented manufacturing process uses less carbon dioxide than plastic and conventional wet moulding options. Almost no water is used in manufacturing to create a highly versatile container mould for brands and retailers.
While a thin plastic liner is still required, it is not bonded to the fibre layer, to make it easier to separate during recycling and to allow use with almost any mechanical process. This can even occur during kerbside collection, with the pressure from collection vehicles enough to easily separate the liner from the outer layer. However, collection and sorting processes vary by geography, and the infrastructure is not in place everywhere for these bottles – this is something the Collective is actively working on.
Anthony (Tony) Perrotta, sustainability and regenerative economy expert at PA Consulting, believes the creation of the Bottle Collective has been essential to breaking through with paper bottles that have the potential to scale effectively.
“Sustainability wins that cannot ultimately be industrialised at meaningful volumes will not satisfy brand owners or regulators,” he opines. “Whilst this is an ongoing challenge, the Bottle Collective considers commercial scalability as an essential factor during the development.
“We knew that this could not be a curated ‘lab trophy’. While it is a bold innovation, there needed to be clear line of sight into producing millions of bottles at the speed, scale, and cost the industry requires. As a collective, that remains the direction of travel, and for Diageo’s products specifically, we are still validating what that pathway looks like in practice.”
That comes from PA Consulting putting its own money where its mouth is. A self funded stage of the development process enabled PA Consulting to effectively de risk the concept, build early prototypes, and gather data that convinced global brand owners such as Diageo that a high performance fibre bottle was feasible.
“No matter how strategically important, no one client is going to foot the bill for such a large project. But what if you split this among six, seven, or eight different partners? Suddenly, that becomes palatable and easier to digest.”
It was also necessary to involve those building the lines that produce and fill bottles into the project at an early stage. This includes welcoming Logoplaste and Krones, among others, as technology partners into the Bottle Collective.
Tony goes on: “By tapping into specialist engineering partners instead of trying to design everything from scratch, we avoided reinventing the wheel all over again.
“We shouldn't and couldn’t develop a fibre bottle on our own. It has to be commercially scalable. Our focus is ensuring the first production line can reach up to 20 million bottles annually, establishing the base capability required before we can scale further.”
Success on the shelf (and on stage)
Tony is fully aware that the Bottle Collective is a ‘very uncommon’ model, but one which might need to become more common. “This matters, as tackling systemic packaging challenges requires shared platforms, shared risks, and new governance models, not just individual R&D projects.”
For leading beverage brand Diageo, participation in the Bottle Collective has led to a live consumer trial in real-life conditions of a 70cl paper bottle made from 90% paper for its Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky. This makes it around 60% lighter than glass alternatives, with almost half the CO2e.
Paper will always be less robust than glass and tests like this are important to learn how the bottles survive in real environments. For a premium whisky like Johnnie Walker Black Label, aesthetics and environmental metrics are only part of the equation. The pack must also protect product integrity under strict regulatory requirements. Tony notes that, ahead of Diageo’s market trial, there was extensive testing for alcohol loss. “Spirits are heavily regulated, so if we have any mass loss in the bottle, that changes the proof level of the contents and would run afoul of all sorts of laws.”
For the flavour, Diageo’s specialists set a non negotiable bar. “We had their flavour specialists constantly ensuring the product tasted like Johnnie Walker throughout the development and commercialisation process to make sure we didn’t taint the product.”
“The fibre bottle had to pass the same rigorous sensory scrutiny as any new glass format, and we were able to pass those tests,” says Tony.
In a drinks category facing multiple headwinds, Tony expects the Johnnie Walker project and others like it to act as a catalyst for more of the industry to embrace paper-based solutions. For example, Johnnie Walker has shown that paper bottles can convey a sense of luxury and high quality previously thought impossible to achieve with fibre-based alternatives. “Not only are we disproving this, in some cases we've added luxury cues that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
“This is helping non alcoholic beverages and mainstream FMCG brands have the line of sight that enables the consideration of other materials.”
Tony sees that packaging is undergoing significant change right now. “Fibre is the lead horse in the race to alternative materials,” he says. “In that context, the brands that lean into experimentation and are willing to showcase their progress will have an advantage in shaping future norms rather than reacting to them.”
He caveats that statement with: “For alternative materials to be taken seriously at scale, they must not risk compromising the product and nor should they ask consumers to compromise on their experience. That balance is not fully resolved yet, and like any meaningful breakthrough, it takes time to get right.”
Success in the London Packaging Week 2025 Innovation Awards for the Johnnie Walker Black Label moulded fibre bottle was proof in action and cemented the project as one of the boldest, most creative, and most sustainable activations of the previous 12 months.
The window is now open for the next innovation that demonstrates the packaging industry's progress towards a sustainable, circular future.
With the deadline for entries into the London Packaging Week 2026 Innovation Awards closing on 24 April, those with an innovative product or project to shout about should submit their entry into one of the 23 categories without delay.
As noted by Tony’s colleague, Jamie Stone, design and sustainability expert at PA Consulting: “Breakthrough innovation takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of partnership. Having big brands like Diageo and others sponsor our technology helps us move forward. Every technology needs to reach a wider audience, and you need people to understand it. Winning awards is a great indication that we're on the right track, step by step.”
Discover the categories for the London Packaging Week 2026 Innovation Awards and start your submission journey at https://www.londonpackagingweek.com/innovation-awards/
