Flex designs new Grolsch bottle

The experienced packaging designers from the Delft-based design firm FLEX/the INNOVATIONLAB have developed a distinctive green return bottle for the world market in cooperation with Grolsch.

The bottle expresses and materializes the beer brand mission to emphasize the premium status of Grolsch as well as to break market homogeneity.

The new bottle is firm, contemporary and characteristic.

A worthy brother to the internationally famous swing-top bottle, only this time with a crown cap.

FLEX has also designed the new crate that holds 24 returnable bottles of 33 cl.

each.

The rounded corners and simple geometry have resulted in a robust, no nonsense crate.

Its appealing labels form a remarkable pattern of waves when the crates are lined up next to each other.

DJPA is responsible for the 2D design of both the bottle and the crate.

Market introduction for both packaging products is planned the first quarter of 2007.

The Delft-based design firm FLEX/the INNOVATIONLAB has worked for Grolsch before and is known as one of the most innovative design firms in The Netherlands, expert in the field of complex packaging problems.

This has been the background for world player Grolsch to ask the participation of FLEX in the development of a new return bottle, putting an end to the boring sight of the beer shelves.

The new bottle is successor to the old brown small beer bottle but carries 10% more beer.

The FLEX designers have taken up the challenge and developed a bottle worth looking at within the complex preconditions that come with the return system.

First of all, the green colour itself is special.

In the Netherlands, beer return bottles have always been brown.

Apart from this, the bottle has several other remarkable elements.

For instance, the bottle only carries a neck label.

The traditional label on the lower part of the bottle has been replaced by a fine and familiar Grolsch logo vertically debossed into the glass on both sides of the bottle.

The Grolsch identity is embedded so firmly in the logo a large label has become redundant.

This identity has now literally become tangible! The bottle has flattened sides and offers excellent and convenient grip.

This carrying convenience also applies to the new Grolsch crate.

The introduction on the Dutch market is planned in February 2007; the rest of the world comes shortly after.

The new bottle design has been tested elaborately with consumers, in the Netherlands as well as abroad.

Reactions of consumer research have rarely been this positive.

Ab Pasman, chairman of the Grolsch board of directors said in an interview in the Volkskrant - a large Dutch national newspaper - of 16 December 2006: "The bottle has a fantastic grip".

"And what's so great: today it's exactly 110 years ago that Grolsch introduced the swing-top bottle".

"I feel the same sensation right now".

"It is a distinctive bottle".

"I am extremely proud." And this can also be said for the designers.

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