Molinard Aluminum Bottle for Eaux Naturelles

Molinard Eaux Naturelles Aluminum Bottle

Another customer of ours, Molinard, uses our aluminum bottles to package its line of “eaux naturelles”.  Molinard started in Grasse, France, the birthplace of the perfume industry.

The water comes in four versions: Hamamelis , Bleuet, Lavender and Rose.  They have a range of applications including for the treatment of  conjunctivitis, irritation, sore eyelids and other inflammatory eye infections.  One can use the water as a a lotion to give the skin more life and sparkle.  It’s also great for under eye bags.

This is a fairly simple bottle.  No gilding like the Fragonard bottle I blogged about earlier.  Simple paper labeling.  Basic cap.  But beautiful nonetheless.

Perfume Aluminum Bottles

Fragonard Aluminum Bottle Gold

We haven’t seen many perfumes packaged in aluminum bottles, despite their well established advantages in keeping fragrances fresh.

Indeed, aluminum oils are used a lot for bulk storage of essential oils.  As I noted in my recent post, most aromatherapists and perfumers are careful not to expose essential oils to sunlight and heat in order not to degrade its qualities.  Retail perfume bottles are typically packaged in clear glass, which is great to show off the color of the perfume, but not so great for preserving their scent.

I was surprised to read in some of the perfume blogs and websites about the nostalgia of some scent afficionados for the few perfumes packaged in aluminum bottles.  Fortunately, there are some really beautiful perfume aluminum bottles in the market today.

Our company is actually the exclusive manufacturer for the gilded aluminum bottles used by Fragonard Parfumeur.  This exquisite bottle is described by Fragonard as  a “sophisticated ‘estagnon’ . . . which protects the perfume from the effects of light and heat.”

Fragonard Aluminum Bottle Line

These gold aluminum bottles of Fragonard are quite stunning visually, even without the caps.  Take a look at the production line picture to the left.  It’s unfortunate, this particular Fragonard line doesn’t seem to be widely distributed in the USA.

Like aluminum beer bottles, it looks like perfumes in aluminum bottles could become collectors’ items.  There are probably far less Fragonard gold aluminum bottles than aluminum beer bottles so the collectible potential could be significant.

But I think in the case of perfume aluminum bottles, collectors will place as much value on the content as the packaging 🙂

Coca-Cola Aluminum Bottles

I saw a really neat display of various generations of Coca-Cola aluminum bottles – a family portrait, so to speak. 

Coca Cola Aluminum Bottles

This display was from a show in Atlanta that I attended.  I didn’t realize that Coca-Cola had so many designs for their aluminum bottle.  Of course some of these designs are limited production runs (which probably enhances their collectible value). 

The display did not have the Karl Lagerfeld Diet Coke aluminum bottles which were released just yesterday and which I wrote about in my last blog post.

Coca Cola Aluminum Bottles

There was also another display that showed how the aluminum bottles are made, starting from a disc cut from a huge aluminum coil and ending up with a fully decorated and lined bottle.

It’s a testament to the Coca-Cola company that they’ve been able to improve their products’ appeal and probably extend their lifecycles  with innovative aluminum packaging. 

I just wish these Coke aluminum bottles were more widely distributed 😦

New Aluminum Bottle for Diet Coke

Aluminum Bottle - Diet Coke

Uber designer Karl Lagerfeld has come up with another aluminum bottle design, this time for Diet Coke.

The aluminum bottles are apparently inspired by three of his models – Coco Rocha, Heidi Mount and Jeneil Williams.  Indeed, these are high-fashion bottles with a decidedly haute couture look. 

I especially like the aluminum bottle in the middle of the picture with the hot pink swirling stripes.  It almost looks like it is wrapped in fabric.  Kudos not just to Lagerfeld for the designs but to the manufacturers who exectuted the design on the aluminum.

I am reminded of a question by one of my readers who asked if aluminum bottles could be made to look more like traditional glass bottles.  I have no doubt that with some smart engineering and bold designs a la Lagerfeld, we will soon start seeing such bottles in the market.

Aluminum Bottles for Essential Oils

I read an interesting piece recently about the packaging of essential oils.

The author writes: “To avoid deterioration and protect the aromatic and therapeutic properties of your essential oils, store them in amber or cobalt blue bottles. Dark glass such as amber or cobalt helps to keep out deteriorating sunlight. . . . Some vendors sell oils in lined aluminum bottles. It has been said that aluminum bottles are acceptable if the interior of the bottles are lined.”

The truth is – most essential oils can be stored easily in plain aluminum; in a few cases, epoxyphenolic coatings are used to line the sides. You have to do stability testing to determine which bottle is best for your product.

Aluminum Bottle - Essential Oil Plus 32

Most essential oils producers have been packing essential oils and flavors in aluminum bottles for decades.  They’re clearly more light-proof than glass bottles and have the added advantage of being lightweight, leak-proof and tamper-proof. Even if aluminum bottles seem more expensive than glass, the cost of protecting a glass bottle, the risk of breakage as well as the added shipping cost have to be factored in when comparing.

Our aluminum bottles for essential oils can come as small as 19 ml (.6 oz.) and all the way up to 32 liters (1,082 oz.).  So we have a wide range of options for both retail and industrial packaging.

Aluminum Bottles in High Schools

I posted a while back about some college organizations at the University of Utah pushing for the elimination of plastic bottles in their campuses.  It seems high school students are now joining the effort.

Students in Fair Lawn High School in New Jersey are now using new aluminum water bottles.  Their goal is to make their school plastic-bottle free.  As you can see in the photo, the bottles are customized with the school’s acronym and with different colors for various graduating classes.

The aluminum bottle is clearly becoming ingrained in the popular culture and the fact that high school students are adopting them is another unmistakable indication of this trend.

Now if Justin Bieber started suporting an aluminum bottle, one can only imagine the huge impact on other high schools.

Aluminum Industrial Bottle Type 4 – For Viscous Products

Consumer aluminum bottles typically get all the attention.  So for this post, we decided to focus on one of our less publicized, but very useful products – the Type 4 industrial aluminum bottle, designed for packaging viscous products.

Here’s how my online dictionary defines viscous:

Industrial Aluminum Bottle - Type 4 Viscous

vis·cous
adj \ˈvis-kəs\

: having or characterized by viscosity <viscous lava> 

Examples of VISCOUS

1. <viscous syrup that takes forever to pour from a narrow-neck bottle>

It’s interesting how the dictionary uses very imprecise terms – “takes forever to pour from a narrow-neck bottle” – to explain the word.  But indeed it is the perfect description of the value of our Type 4 product which is a wide mouth aluminum bottle whose geometry, seamless structure and wide opening make for very easy pouring of viscous materials.  The Type 4 bottle has an inner neck of 2.67” and can take an LDPE plug or PP screw cap.  It comes in a range of sizes from 2.5L (85 oz) to 30L (1056 oz).

There are probably as many applications for the type 4 product as there are viscous products.  You can go to this page for an overview of our other aluminum bottles for viscous products.

Rare Aluminum Bottles

Budweiser Aluminum Bottle

The increasing popularity of aluminum bottles especially in the beverage industry has spawned a collectors’ market for rare aluminum bottles.

Interestingly enough, the rarest and priciest aluminum bottles are unopened. Collectors seem to value aluminum bottles that are in pristine state, with caps intact, no visible dents, etc. It seems they don’t particularly care about consuming the contents. Unlike the wine market, these aluminum bottles are clearly being valued for their packaging and not the contents. Wine collectors buy rare wines with the expectation that they will eventually open the bottles for that special occasion. But it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a market for empty bottles of rare wines.

The bottle pictured here is a St. Patrick’s Day Budweiser Light Aluminum 16 oz. bottle listed on ebay. The bottle still has a cap but is empty. Price: $7.99.

No doubt the limited edition bottles such as the Canary Islands Beer bottle which we featured in a previous post will be on collectors’ lists.

Aluminum Beer Bottle for Tenerife Carnaval

Aluminum Beer Bottle - Canary Islands

This aluminum beer bottle has all the makings of a collectible.

The bottle, branded Dorada, was developed by Canary Island Beer Co., which is part of the SAB Miller Group, for the Tenerife International Carnival. Decorated in Carnival-inspired motifs, this is the official beer for the festival.

Only two hundred fifty thousand of these beautifully decorated bottles of Dorada will be distributed. This will surely be a popular item at the carnival. It seems equally sure that it will be a collector’s item.

Expect to see these bottles in ebay auctions soon.

BTW, the Tenerife Carnaval seems to be a worthy rival to its more well known competitors such as the carnivals in Rio and New Orleans.

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Aluminumbottles.com On Flickr

We’ve decided to add some of our photos to Flickr. You can see the Flickr site here.

Our current website has a lot of our product photos. We figured we could give our readers another way to view all the photos quickly in one place, without having to flip through many pages. It’s also an easy way for us to show some other photos that may not necessarily be aluminum bottles.

New photos that we upload to our Flickr site will show on the bottom right corner of this blog.

Stay tuned!