The Portavin Group, which bottles and packages wine, considers the entire life of its product including design, recyclability, and end-of-life management.
The company is a provider and user of reusable and recyclable packaging, primarily glass and cardboard. With end-of-life recovery in mind, the group considers packaging design through supporting and supplying lightweight bottles, reducing overall material use.
Portavin is also committed to providing alternative materials packaging, with some customers exploring the use of flexible pouch packaging and re-usable stainless steel vessels. In the reporting period, the group transferred pouch packing equipment between states to ensure its continued use and provide flexible packaging options to committed customers.
Committed to whole-of-life packaging management, the group is actively seeking to manage and minimise its use of pallets, particularly non-recyclable export pallets. As part of this, Portavin promotes the use of slip-sheet packaging that does not need a pallet in export container packing, thus preventing additional pallets entering the waste stream. It then works with its local supply chain to ensure the return and re-use of its remaining pallets. The company has also helped transition some suppliers from using disposable pallets to using standard reusable pallets, to further reduce packaging generation.
Portavin has supply contracts with producers of glass, screw caps, fibre products, yeast and other dry goods, and supplies for provision to bottling. It owns and operates one mobile bottling line based in Western Australia, as well as five static lines. Portavin is considered Australasia’s largest independent wine services supplier.
