Label-Free PET Bottles? 

Today we're looking at a topic that's been making waves in the packaging industry: labelless or label-free PET bottles for beverage packaging
Now, you might be wondering, what exactly are these labelless PET bottles? 
As it happens, they're exactly what you’d think – PET bottles without the traditional paper or plastic labels wrapped around them. 
PET is pretty much the standard material for beverage bottles, you’ll see it used for water bottles as well as for packaging all kinds of other drinks. You can be sure that a huge
 number of these packages are filled, labeled and shipped everyday.
With labelless bottles, instead of all the marketing message and product information being printed on the label, it is either printed directly onto the bottle or moulded into the bottle design itself.

 Why do this, you might ask?
There are several reasons why eliminating labels could be a good idea. 
Applying labels to these bottles at very high speeds Is a complicated process, requiring specialized and very expensive labelling equipment.

Bearing in mind, that a labelling system can be handling well over 1000 bottles per minute, this is a complicated piece of equipment that needs to be maintained, supplied with labels and is a potential point of failure on a hugely expensive packaging line.
Removing the label, makes the packaging process somewhat simpler. 
Another reason, and perhaps the most important, involves sustainability and recycling.
Beverage manufacturers, are under pressure to improve their level of sustainability, and in particular, we reduce the amount of plastic packaging that is a constant pollutant.
Anything that can help with sustainability and recycling of the millions of PET bottles sold each day, can only help.
Labels, especially those made from different materials than the bottle itself, can pose significant challenges during the recycling process. They often need to be removed before or during recycling, which can be a labor-intensive and costly process.
And bear in mind that with PET being the most recycled plastic worldwide, any step we can take to streamline the recycling process is a step in the right direction.
Going labelless also means reducing the use of additional materials, which aligns with the global push towards more sustainable packaging solutions.
So, who's leading the charge in this label-free revolution? 
Major beverage companies, for starters. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, released its first labelless PET bottles in South Korea, and other brands are following suit.
Coca-Cola has also just commenced a limited trial of labelless packaging for its Sprite brand in the UK.
The trial is running from January until March 2024 and involves 500 mL single bottles of sprite and sprite zero being sold in eight Tesco Express stores.
For this trial, the Sprite logo is molded into the front of the bottle. The rear of the bottle is laser etched to show product information as well as nutritional info.
What Are The Disadvantages?
Well, there are certainly some good sustainability based reasons for abolishing the label, there are also a number of issues with this label free idea, let’s have a look at some of them here:
Marketing
The printed label on a typical PET bottle is the brand marketing teams, ideal playing field. Plenty of room for branding and messaging.
When the unlabeled bottles are on a store shelf with competitors, it will be difficult for consumers to distinguish which is which. 
Legislation
The label also contains the nutritional information, allergen information and ingredients. While this can be added to the bottle using a laser, the contrast is not going to meet the same level as printing on a label.
Some of the current information printed on labels is mandated to be present – will it be acceptable when it is harder to read?
Packaging Line
On the packaging line, bottles with molded and features such as logos will need to be oriented before the rest of the information is laser etched onto the back.
To do this, something similar to the existing rotary labeling systems will be needed.
In addition, laser coding technology would struggle to keep up with the typical output speeds on beverage packaging lines. Modern laser, coding systems are able to print single line codes at production speed, but would not be able to print the larger area for nutritional and product information that would be needed.
The laser print is also somewhat low contrast. Just try and find the laser production code that is printed on most water bottles – it’s rather hard to see.
Barcodes
Bottles intended for individual sale, need to have a UPC or EAN barcode that can be scanned by common point of sale systems.
Laser coders would not be able to print these barcodes at beverage, production line speeds, and the contrast, or lack thereof, would make it very difficult for standard point of sales scanners to be able to read them.
I’ve not read anything about how this issue could be addressed and there doesn’t seem to be any photos of the rear of the labelless Sprite bottles to be found online at the moment. 
So is it for real?
Some time ago I wrote an article on labelless PET bottles and titled it
The Concept of Labelless PET Bottles: A Leap Forward or Dead on Arrival?

So which is it?
Does the labelless PET bottle concept make  sense and will the sustainability advantages bring it into the mainstream?
Or is it going to fade away do due to the disadvantages?
To be honest, I have no idea.

Some governments (South Korea bing an example) are looking to mandate removing the labels from water bottles over the next few years, and with brands such as Coca-Cola being involved, and printing companies such as Domino which is very influential in the packaging world also promoting the concept, it is going to be really interesting to see how things develop. 

What do you think?

That’s it for today – see you soon on another Everything Packaging Podcast