The potential deal is between Corvaglia, a Swiss-based manufacturer of beverage closures and a global bottling company in Mexico – that cannot currently be named.
European potential
The development follows the launch of Corvagia’s 26mm BTL short neck closure (CSN-26) last year in the US and Canada.
Romeo Corvagia, the managing director of Corvagia told BerverageDaily.com that the potential closure of the deal with the multinational bottler could open up the European market for the CSN-26. Corvagia explained that such a deal could influence the bottler’s branches in other parts of the world and possibly Europe too.
“In Europe the bottlers are a little hesitant since some of them encountered problems changing from the well known 30/25mm to the shorter and lighter version of 29/25mm and also to a similar finish like our 26mm,” said the managing director, “the company has had less trouble changing over from Alaska 26mm to our CSN-26 in the US.”
Corvaglia was close to launching its first project in Germany with CSN-26 for 2011 but the volumes for individual Bottlers in Europe are much smaller than they are in the US and Canada and a failure to reach a critical mass meant that the deal fell through.
CSN-26 in North America
The Corvaglia Group has been developing its lightweight caps since 2003. “Lightweighting” is a big issue in the PET container business – with the customer always eyeing up the cheapest product, cost is vitally important in terms of mass production. Lightweight bottle closures aim to reduce both costs and wastage, with reductions in both the cap weight and neck thickness.
In September 2009 Corvaglia first launched the CSN-26, developed for Ice River Springs Water Company in Canada. The product was then extended to the US market with Silver Springs Bottled Water Company in Florida. The cap weighed 1 gram, compared to the 1.60 grams of previous caps.
Since its launch, there have been further developments to the CSN-26 in the US as Corvaglia has brought the weight of the product down from 1 gram to 0.8 grams.