Krones' superlight PET bottle wins the German Design Award 2015 in the packaging category. This innovative bottle is suitable for being filled with carbonated beverages, and has a capacity of 500 millilitres. It tips the scales at a mere 9.9 grams - making it 30 to 45 per cent lighter than comparable PET containers on the market.The lightweight bottle has been developed by a design team at Krones that's already won several awards for its innovative packaging solutions. One of the designers paramount priorities is to develop containers that are both supremely marketable and at the same time eco-friendly. Like the "PET lite 9.9 carbonated", which marries affordability to ecological awareness. Since it can be produced with minimal expenditure of energy and material, it's a true lightweight, not least in terms of production costs and minimised environmental impact.
This is achieved, for example, by dividing up the bottle into several functional areas with different wall thicknesses. Most of the PET material is located in the upper part of the bottle, where it is held and opened. The walls in the lower section, by contrast, contains only half as much material. Nonetheless, the bottle is reassuringly stable for handling and consumers' use, thanks to its sophisticatedly ingenious container geometry, in which the designers have left not a single square millimetre to chance. Further significant weight savings are achieved with the special neck finish, since in contrast to other PET bottles this one does not have a screw-cap, but a tear-off ring-pull closure.
The German Design Award is the international premium prize of the German Design Council conferred on outstanding products and projects from the field of product and communication design, on celebrity designers and emerging young talents, all of whom in their own way are pathbreakers on the German and international design scene. The aim of the German Design Award is to discover, spotlight and acclaim unique design trends.
In view of the entrants' high level of quality, the German Design Council awards "Special Mentions" to works whose design exhibits particularly successful part-aspects or solutions - an accolade that pays due tribute to the hard work and commitment of the companies and designers involved.
