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Pam Strayer | Wine Business Monthly
Out with the styrofoam and out with the heavy glass wine bottles. Both have negative environmental impacts. But now–out with round wine bottles, too?
That’s what Neotempo CEO Kia Behnia, a tech entrepreneur turned Napa vintner, says is the next step in reducing wine’s carbon emissions. He’s created a hexagonally shaped bottle, which he says means a quantum leap in efficiency.
“We went through 38 different prototypes of different shapes and designs,” he said.
Speaking at Napa Green’s workshop All Things Bottle Sustainability at Pine Ridge Vineyards in Napa last month, Behnia said lightweighting is only one aspect of reducing carbon emissions in wine’s glass bottle manufacturing. He emphasized that system design is critical.
“The shape and size are just as important as weight,” he said, criticizing the approach of focusing solely on weight. “If you have a lightweight model that’s fragile, and you need more protection, you’re using more material down the road to protect that fragility.”
Behnia says taking a system approach to redesigning wine bottles is key to reducing overall carbon emissions from glass wine bottles.
“A traditional pallet holds about 56 cases of wine. Our design stores about 80,” he said. “That means less trucks, less containers, less pallets across the board before it even gets to retail or gets to a distribution center.”
But that’s not all, he told the attendees. “Lastly, we lowered the shipping costs by 39 percent,” Behnia said.
“And lastly, I’m very proud to say we had zero returns or losses [in our trial],” he added, meaning that fragility was not an issue, he said.
The bottle he tested weighs 560 grams but is hexagonally shaped. (Next year, he’s targeting a 460 gram bottle.)
“Why are bottles round?…they’re inefficient,” he said. “When you look at a round bottle, there is a lot of negative space. That’s all air that you ship.”
“A hexagon bottle is stronger and can lay flat and absorb pressure, and structurally it’s much more supportive,” he said.
A Location Tracker And A Monitoring Sensor In The Box
In addition to the materials, Behnia is adding digital sensors and software to add more intelligence and value to his customers.
Partnering with WestRock, a packaging company, Behnai co-developed software that goes onto a WestRock tracker that provides the customer with precise location data. The sensor tracker detects and reports back on temperature, humidity, and shocks to the package.
The tracker makes life more convenient for customers frustrated by missing Fedex and UPS deliveries and required signatures for wine.
“How many times have you had customers complain about sitting and waiting for a wine to arrive, rather than getting notified that the wine is within 10 miles of the destination, so that they can plan for it. We look at this as being very transformative,” he said. “We monitor the shipment all the way to the customer, to make sure there was nothing that happened to it.”
In a followup interview, Behnia said, “We have one customer who is a nurse who missed her delivery four times. She was finally able to get the wine. Another in a housing complex did not recognize the signature on her wine delivery shipment and wondered where the wine was. It turned out to be someone in the mailroom signed for it, and the wine was waiting for her in the mailroom.”
The sensor comes from Tag-N-Trac, Behnia said, adding that customers are asked to return the sensor, using a pre-paid envelope included in their shipment. “We’ve had 100 percent compliance so far,” he said.
In addition, the new hex bottles he’s piloted are made from Estal’s wild glass, which says it is 100 percent recycled.
He also uses a cardboard outer box that is more resistant to being dropped.
Next Steps
After obtaining four patents on his design and its functionality, Behnia is licensing the design currently to interested parties. Estal has been making his hexagon shaped bottles.
“Specifically we’re looking at Napa and Sonoma wineries because there’s bottling facilities that can already fulfill the hexapod design.”
“My official position is, yes, I’m willing to share it with the right party, if they’re really into sustainability, not just ‘Oh, I just like it because it’s pretty.’”
“I’ve turned down a couple of offers already, because it didn’t seem to be sustainability focused. Some seemed to behave like ‘This is luxury, this cool looking bottle’ as opposed to thinking about ‘I’ve got to make the right choices and other parts of my packaging as well.’”
Beyond The Bottle: Next Gen All Electric Delivery
Behnia said he’s now looking ahead to creating an EV only wine delivery service for Bay Area consumers. “It’s point to point zero emissions,” he said.
He’s open to others who want to join him in this next endeavor.
About Napa Green: The Napa Green 501c3 is a global leader in sustainable winegrowing, setting the highest bar for sustainability and climate action in the wine industry. Napa Green facilitates whole system soil to bottle certification for wineries and vineyards, and provides the expertise, boots-on-the-ground support, and resources to continually improve. Learn more at https://napagreen.org/participating-members/.
Anna Brittain
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