Both awards were for Sidel's design work on a new bottle for Société des Eaux d'Aix-les-Bains (SEAB), one of France's leading producers of bottled mineral water. The bottle marked a number of design firsts in the bottled water market as the only triangular mineral water bottle produced in PET and the only one without a conventional label.
The first award was presented at the Beverage Innovation Awards on 19 September 2013 during the Drinktec international trade exhibition in Munich, Germany, where Sidel was declared the winner of the 'Best bottle in PET' category. The annual Beverage Innovation Awards is now in its tenth year and returned to Drinktec in 2013 to reward and acknowledge excellence in beverage products, packaging, marketing and sustainability. More than 370 entries were received from 40 countries, illustrating the truly global reach of the event. The breadth of the awards is also highlighted by its 29 categories, with Sidel winning the hotly contested Best Bottle in PET.
Less than two days later, Sidel once again proved victorious, this time at the Pentawards on 21 September 2013, with the same bottle taking Bronze in the Beverages category at a gala ceremony at the W Hotel inBarcelona,Spain.
The Pentawards is a prestigious, worldwide competition exclusively devoted to packaging design in all its forms, with entries received from around the globe and a truly international judging panel.
Sidel has won a string of Pentawards for its packaging design expertise, starting back in 2008, when it received a bronze award for its NoBottle™ lightweight 500 ml water bottle. Then in 2009 it won another bronze for its flame-like PET beer bottle, followed by a silver in 2012 for DailyDoseTM, an innovative multipack made up of six assorted bottles reminiscent of fruit slices. This year the judges recognised Sidel's particularly innovative approach in developing the new SEAB bottle.
Close collaboration
SEAB worked very closely with Sidel's in-house design team to create a bottle that would stand out in the French hospitality sector. Its triangular shape is itself a distinctive statement, as is the decision not to adopt a conventional labelling approach but rather to engrave the logo and product statutory information directly onto the mould using a laser machine. This helps give the appearance that the bottle is glass rather than PET, recognising that French cafes, restaurants and hotels traditionally serve water in glass bottles and carafes.
General Manager of SEAB, Philippe Germaneau, says: "Our objective was to ensure the promotion of the Aix-les-Bains brand image. We needed to bring different and innovative products to consumers within the hospitality sector. In addition, we wanted to develop a competitive advantage through packaging which was more respectful of the environment."
Stylish yet functional
Judges at both the Pentawards and the Beverage Innovation Awards were impressed by the high-quality look and feel of the SEAB bottle, although functionality is also an important consideration in the judging criteria and the Sidel design scored highly in this respect also. The triangular format proved particularly challenging in terms of stability, with the bottom of the bottle extremely small in comparison to its body.
Despite the relatively small base, the required stability was still achieved, meeting the practical and functional requirements of the brief in a design which is truly stylish and eye-catching. Vice President for Packaging & Tooling at Sidel, Vincent Le Guen, commented: "The Pentawards and the Beverage Innovation Awards are an excellent opportunity to see the latest developments and trends in packaging design, and to put our own design expertise under the scrutiny of some very experienced judges. We are obviously delighted that the creativity of our in-house packaging design department has once again been recognised. SEAB has also received very positive feedback from its customers, which we are equally delighted with."
"When it comes to Sidel, we really appreciated the strong commitment and interest from the company's team, right from the start of talks," added SEAB's Philippe Germaneau. "Sidel's packaging design and process expertise was vital for us to produce such a successful end-result."
