Coca cola chooses Spain as pilot of its caps attached to the bottle

Coca-Cola is thus adapting to the new provisions on plastic packaging closures, included in the EU Directive on single-use plastics.

Coca-Cola in Europe, in collaboration with Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP), is going to launch a pilot test in Spain to introduce and test caps attached to plastic bottles.

This measure aims to promote the collection and recycling of plastic bottle caps to help eliminate waste generated by packaging.

Coca-Cola will, starting this year, take a gradual approach to incorporating bonded caps on bottles across Europe, working closely with its bottlers, CCEP and the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC).

Both bottlers will begin to carry out pilot tests and test the first implementations in 2021, incorporating this innovation market to market, with the aim of being prepared throughout Europe to meet the deadline in 2024.

For sale in Spain at least four million containers with the new closure in 500ml plastic bottles of the Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite and Schuss brands.

The bottles with the new cap will be manufactured in Barcelona and will be marketed this summer in convenience stores and selected points of sale. in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Aragon, the Canary Islands, as well as in central and southern Spain. The beverages will offer the same drinking experience that people have come to expect from Coca-Cola brands, in a package designed to ensure that the cap is recycled with the bottle.

The transition to the new cap attached to the bottle will be clearly communicated to consumers on the packaging:

“New cap, please recycle me”,  as well as in our online and in-store marketing, with the intention of supporting the EU Directive’s objective of minimizing packaging waste. The design of the cap has undergone extensive consumer testing, and the resulting cap to be tested in Spain is the preferred choice in terms of design, comfort and consumer experience.

The pilot test in Spain will serve to test the production and performance of the closures in hot climates, before a wider roll-out begins throughout the country and in the rest of Europe. This test, along with other consumer research on on-pack communication, will provide valuable information for Coca-Cola to apply when introducing the new caps on a large scale across Europe.

In 2018, in Spain the message “Please recycle me” was introduced on the caps of Coca-Cola containers

With the aim of achieving “A World Without Waste”, Coca-Cola in Spain launched its ambitious Circular Mares project, which aims to clean up coasts, protected areas and the seabed, raise awareness about recycling and promote the circular economy by supporting start-ups and scientific studies.

Since its launch two years ago, more than 1,2 tons of waste have been collected on the coasts and seabeds of Spain and Portugal.

In November last year, Coca-Cola launched in Spain CanCollar®, a totally recyclable cardboard packaging solution for multipack cans, which replaces the plastic rings on cans, thus contributing to further reduce the waste generated by plastic.