Owens-Illinois launches O-I: EXPRESSIONS to transform glass bottle design

The world’s leading glass bottle manufacturing company, Owens-Illinois, has launched an innovation that is set to transform glass bottle design through customisation and personalisation by sculpting glass bottles into multi-dimensional works of art.

The innovation, O-I: EXPRESSIONS, has been realised through the use of digital printing and has been created for design agencies, packaging professionals as well as food and drink marketers that are aiming to stand out and provide its consumers with fresh ways to choose their brands.

O-I anticipates that through this new invention, it will enable them to improve its customer satisfaction, develop brand engagement and offer excellent value to its consumers.

Speaking exclusively to Manufacturing Global, Arnaud Aujouannet, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of O-I, said: “The most important thing about O-I: EXPRESSIONS is it's a differentiation service provided to brands but enabled by digital direct-to-print on glass. There are four core benefits; it's unleashing creativity, it's increasing speed to market, it's a true personalisation and it’s sustainable.”

“There is unlimited creativity and you even can print images on packaging with high resolution that can go up to 720 DPI. The unique thing about what we offer is the ability to create a 3-D print like embossing on bottles and even colour this embossing. It’s enabling us to provide a completely different look and feel for a bottle that potentially starts with a very standard shape.”

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O-I: EXPRESSIONS is set to enable brands to meet an increasing consumer demand for personalised products.

With the innovation being sustainable, it won’t negatively impact the recyclability of glass due to its use of organic inks, as well as decreasing waste through lower inventories.

Vitaliano Torno, president of I-O Europe, also told Manufacturing Global: “There are other things we can do with personalization of the bottles. The way we can make every bottle unique from a technical point of view in order to identify the bottle and trace it back to when it was made, where it was made, which ingredients we use, etc.”

Torno added: “We see the desire for individual retailers to provide unique promotions gaining momentum and brands are increasingly using personalized promotions to differentiate themselves. To execute these types of programs requires fast design and approval cycles with prompt execution. O-I: EXPRESSIONS makes all of this possible.”