Verallia electrifies its Cognac furnaces and bottles

eralding the facilities as a “world first”, Patrice Lucas, managing director of the Verallia group, officially opened the “brand new 100% electric furnace for food packaging” on September 10 in Châteaubernard, in France’s Cognac region. The furnace has a capacity of 8 megawatts and can produce 300,000 transparent bottles for spirits, primarily Cognac. By transitioning “from gas to low-carbon electricity”, Europe’s leading glass packaging manufacturer aims to blaze the trail “very surely and determinedly towards decarbonised glass packaging”.

The first 100% electric furnace reduces CO2 emissions by 60% compared with gas fusion, stresses Pierre-Henri Desportes, managing director of Verallia France. That’s 12,000 to 14,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually for the electric furnace compared with 30,000 tonnes/year for gas, points out Romain Barral, operations director with the Verallia group. Improved insulation for the electric furnace reduces energy losses five-fold, adds Desportes, with thermal dispersion dropping from 25% to 5%.

The first large electric furnace – other furnaces produce perfume bottles – the Châteaubernard facilities feature vertical fusion technology. The 75m3 glass bath is 4 metres deep with a temperature of 1,400°C at the base, between electrodes for the glass fusion. The first-of-its-kind furnace was started up last April and is not only a feat of technical engineering – it also required a substantial investment by Verallia. The group announced that the furnace had cost 57 million euros, a hefty increase on the 30 million forecast at the start of 2022 at the industrial launch phase. The project took two years to materialise.