Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/112023
PACKAGING What makes glass green? A visit to the Tracy, Calif., glass-manufacturing plant of Perrysburg, Ohio-based O-I (formerly Owens-Illinois) provided a lesson in the ���endless recyclability��� of glass bottles. O-I, according to Sean Gallagher, VP of sales for the wine category, operates 81 plants in 21 countries, 159 furnaces and 444 glass-forming machines internationally. O-I produces some 40 billion bottles for all sorts of products every year in the United States. (The Tracy plant once concentrated on ketchup.) ���We are the largest glass-bottle manufacturer in the U.S. and supply glass to nine of the 10 largest domestic wineries,��� Gallagher said. Minimum wine bottle orders are around 1 million cases per year: According to WinesVinesDATA, only 30 wineries in North America currently produce that volume. The newly formed ���bottles��� are upended and moved into machines that mechanically reproduce the traditional, 2,000-yearold glass-blowing process, delimited by forming machines, then slowly cooled by reducing air temperatures to 900��F. ���The inside is still hot,��� said plant manager Dan Armagost. Reheated in ���lehrs��� to a uniform temperature to anneal the glass, the bottles are then coated with a proprietary protective scratch-preventer. Automatically inspected for 17 quality benchmarks at points from gob to com- pletion, any bottle that doesn���t measure up goes right back to the cullet pile and is recycled to begin its life anew. It���s a satisfying image for those who enjoy the cheerful clank of glass dropping into those blue recycling bins. Not only does recycling curtail the plunder of raw materials, use of recycled cullet makes the manufacturing process itself more eco-friendly. Remelting cullet requires lower temperatures and less time than making new glass from scratch, hence reducing Highlights ��� ighter weight bottles are the new L ���standard,��� manufacturers say. ��� xcept for 187ml PET ���airline bottles,��� E alternative packaging has barely scratched the glass bottle industry. ��� esigning for screwcaps: done deal. D Looming like a monolith in the bland rural outskirts of Tracy, in the San Joaquin Valley east of San Francisco, the plant receives mountains of crushed glass cullet from Northern California recyclers every day. Every kilogram of cullet used in the manufacturing process replaces 1.2 kg of virgin raw materials that would otherwise need to be extracted from the earth: limestone, soda ash and sand. Mixed with these fresh components at the plant, the cullet is heated in furnaces at temperatures of 2,800��F. When it���s attained a honey-like texture, it���s funneled in molten, glowing ���gobs��� into cylindrical molds to create an inverted bottle shape. Each gob is lopped off by strong jaws of metal alloy (designed to withstand the heat). french oak dominos Caroline Hoogenboom Napa - Sonoma Cell. (707) 364-6334 caroline@ermitageusa.com Amy Lee Oregon - Washington Central coast of California Cell. (509) 995-2771 amy@ermitageusa.com Vincent Garry Sales Director Cell. (707) 225-2105 vincent@ermitageusa.com Office: Tel: (707) 224-2377 Fax: (707) 224-2390 433 Soscol Avenue Suite B151 Napa, California 94559 - USA Parc d���activit��s des Bertranges - 58400 La Charit��-sur-Loire - France Tel. + 33 3 86 69 43 79 | FAX + 33 3 86 69 67 47 | www.tonnellerie-ermitage.com ��� ecycling is an integral part of the R glass-manufacturing process: An estimated 30%-60% of every wine bottle has been recycled. Win es & Vines M A RC H 20 13 39