Design

Britvic has introduced a lighter weight bottle for its Robinsons brand that will save an estimated 330 tonnes of plastic a year.

The soft drink company's new one-litre PET bottle now weighs 2g less at 36g.

Artenius PET Packaging in Wrexham supplied the light-weighted pre-form which was then blown in house at Britvic's Norwich factory.

"We constantly look at technical innovation, testing new moulds and materials. Obviously structural and product integrity are a priority so any new packaging innovation is rigorously tested to ensure we deliver Robinsons in perfect condition to our customers," said Britvic.

The move follows last year's pack redesign, which saw a 1.5g reduction in weight and allowed Britvic to cut the amount of cardboard used in retail displays by 5% and save an additional 50 tonnes of cardboard a year.

This is another step towards the firm's target to remove 5,000 tonnes of packaging by December 2010 as part of the Courtauld Commitment with Wrap.

Britvic was the first soft drinks company to sign the agreement to reduce the amount of packaging material waste used.

Since 2006 the firm has invested more than £5m in making changes to the Robinsons brand to reduce the weight of packaging used, saving 1,600 tonnes of plastic.

Britvic chief executive Paul Moody said: "Robinsons has come a long way in reducing its impact on the environment in the past two years but as always we are focused on further packaging reductions, as well as energy and water usage reductions across all Britvic brands and at all our manufacturing sites."

Britvic sells more than 200 million Robinsons bottles a year, including lemon and orange barley water, squash in six flavours and nine fruit and barley drink variants.