Vöslauer brings a tethered cap to the market
Thanks to a solution developed by ALPLA, Austria’s leading company in the mineral water market, Vöslauer, is already complying with the EU requirement from 2024 that all drinks caps remain tethered to the bottle after opening. ALPLA developed no less than four versions of the tethered cap.
From 3 July 2024, the caps and lids on beverage packaging of up to three litres must remain firmly attached to the bottle even after opening. This is stipulated in the EU’s Single-Use Plastics Directive and is aimed at limiting the environmental pollution caused by unattached caps. ALPLA presented its customers with a number of different solutions over a year ago. And based on this, Vöslauer, the number-one company in the Austrian mineral water market, has now introduced such a cap for some of its 1-litre bottles in Austria and Germany, as the first ALPLA customer in the world to do so.
Easy to use
Vöslauer’s innovative ‘Bleibt dran’ tethered cap guarantees top quality and drinking enjoyment. The cap can be pulled to one side with a slight twisting motion, keeping it out of the way when pouring or when drinking directly from the bottle. ‘The cap is tethered to the bottle by a band, so it can’t get lost. With this solution, we are performing pioneering work as a provider in this area of sustainability too,’ explains Vöslauer’s Managing Director Birgit Aichinger. Attached to bottles made entirely of 100% recyclate, the caps can simply be disposed of in the recycling bin bag or bin or, in Germany, via bottle return machines.
Long-standing partnership
‘We are thrilled to have reached another milestone in new packaging technology. This innovation is the result of the outstanding expertise of our partner ALPLA,’ says Vöslauer’s Managing Director Herbert Schlossnikl. ‘We are a team that works on and then realises projects together again and again. We have been doing this for some time now, so we work excellently together,’ adds Werner Rosenberger, Plant Manager at ALPLA Steinabrückl. Another advantage is that the two companies are in the direct vicinity of one another as short routes are a key aspect of this concept.
Cap solutions from ALPLA
The tethered cap solutions offered by ALPLA are sustainable and functional. No additional material is needed for their manufacture compared with conventional caps. They can be used on various packaging sizes. The caps remain firmly tethered to the beverage packaging for its entire life cycle and do not generate any separate waste as a result. No major modifications need to be made to the customers’ bottling lines.
The tethered cap now being introduced by Vöslauer is based on the solution known at ALPLA by the name Dance. The cap remains tethered to the cap ring on the bottleneck with a single band after it is opened. With this band, it can be flexibly positioned far enough away from the opening.
The Relax cap can be fixed in three different positions on the bottleneck after opening. Two bands are used to tether the cap to the packaging. The mouth and the bottleneck are clear through 360 degrees, as is the case with untethered caps.
With Soul, the cap can be bent back to an angle of approximately 160 degrees when opened and attached to the thread with a small pin. This fixing in place prevents the cap from springing back, allowing for undisturbed drinking enjoyment.
The flip-top folding cap Jazz can likewise be attached to the bottleneck after opening. This results in a very wide and convenient aperture angle for pouring or for drinking from the bottle.
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