FDBusiness.com

Packaging giant Ardagh was behind the Absolut Originality special edition range of bottles, rolled out this month.

The company’s glass production plant in Limmared, Sweden developed the bottles using partial colouring. According to Ardagh, this technique believed to be an industry first on a commercial scale.

Four million bottles have individually designed with each representing a unique work of art. The effect was achieved through a ‘drop’ of cobalt blue infused into the molten glass at the ‘hot-end’ of the production process in Limm

Johan Gorter, chief executive for glass Europe at Ardagh said: “The concept takes unique bottle design to the next level, where the decoration is achieved within the glass container, rather than being added to the outer surface of the bottle after production.”

Mathias Westphal, global brand director at Absolut added: “We took inspiration from traditional Swedish glass craft and made it available to the world. When we watched a drop of cobalt sink into the hot glass for the first time we didn’t know what it would look like. But the very first bottle looked amazing, and what started as a playful experiment ended up as four million one-of-a-kind works of art.

“The streak of cobalt forms a sophisticated contrast to the crystal clear glass, and the blue makes each bottle unmistakably Absolut.”