€3 million in funding for re-using 7 million bottles of wine and spirits/year

quipped with a pilot collection, sorting and washing workshop since the end of 2022, the Charentes start-up company Eco in Pack has proven its efficacy in bottle re-use by working with wine brands that include Lafite and A. de Luze in Bordeaux and spirits brands such as Hennessy, Martell and Rémy Martin. It has also worked with trade events such as Wine Paris and the non-trade Bordeaux Fête le Vin festival.

The company’s processing capacity, however, is limited to 200,000 bottles and so the 2021-established firm has just completed its first round of fund raising. The 3 million euros raised will take its annual processing capacity to 7 million bottles by 2027. The bottles will be processed in the company’s first industrial washing centre. In mid-July, an industrial washing machine was installed and the facilities are due to open in September, followed by industrial centres in a number of locations in 2025-2026, in both France and abroad. The challenge is to reach a new level of bottle re-use, through a deposit-return scheme.

Concurrently with this, the start-up continues to roll out educational and consultancy programmes through the Impact Consulting agency. The aim is to “implement a practical action plan spread over time”, starting with eco-design of the packaging and culminating in bottle re-use.