Building sustainable impact with unique and customizable PET-bottle range

Anora wanted to develop a PET bottle range that would exceed customer expectations and break prejudices what comes to the acceptance of PET as a material. The challenge is that PET bottles still have a bad reputation among consumers – its environmental impact compared to other packaging options is not fully understood. Glass is also considered classier and exclusive, which has brought challenges to switching to using more PET packaging with premium products. Our objective was to develop a completely new kind of packaging model that would support Anora beverage brands and their premium status, while also driving the change towards more sustainable packaging.

Category cues were one of the key issues when we started the project: how do certain shapes indicate the content and the category of a product. In practise, the spirit industry is actually moving towards category hybrids, and getting influenced from one another. This was taken into consideration with new bottles, so that in the future, they would offer freedom instead of trying to fit just certain categories.

The actual design work was carried out from the drawing board to physical prototypes to which existing product brands and label designs were applied. By iterating and cross-analysing different models and product brands, it was ensured that all the details were in place and that the new PET bottle series would meet all the criteria set for it.

In the first phase two completely new universal bottle shape designs were created to challenge the category norms and offer freedom to use them. These new PET bottles can be adapted to different brands to support their unique brand identities. Rethinking the whole bottle design has allowed Anora to take a big step forward with PET packaging. This project shows that there is no need to compromise on design or quality when designing a brand building bottle range from a better material option for the environment.