Sidel’s 0.75-liter PET bottle looks amazingly like a rugby ball with the same oval shape and grainy texture created by 10,000 dimples on four panels. The bottle features stitches, smooth areas on the sides, and rests on what looks like a kicking tee. There’s even an inflation valve! Launched for rugby’s biggest event in 2007, this realistic replica embodies Sidel’s expertise in creating unique shapes. The new package also reflects the values Sidel shares with rugby: a taste for competition, team spirit, and a desire to push the limits.
Realistically beautiful
When Sidel’s Process Engineering Department designed and modeled the bottle, its ultimate goal was to combine beauty and technical performance. In the quest to create a realistic-looking package, designers looked for ways to reproduce the ball’s stitches, texture, and kicking tee. And, going one step further to get the perfect look, they tried something new, actually placing the label under the bottle to avoid altering the shape of the ball. Sidel then produced prototype and production molds and tested the bottle at the customer’s facility.
This bottle is made on a Sidel blow molding machine and filled by the Eaux minerals d’Alet company, a bottler located in Alet-les-Bains, in France’s Aude region. The bottle and cap are both blue, representing the colors of the Alet spring. With the “only water packaged in a ball,” Alet is making a bold statement. Its natural mineral water from the pure springs of the Pyrénées cathares is the choice of elite athletes including the Stade Toulousain, title holder in Europe, the Toulouse Football Club, and the Olympic Lyonnais, which even chose Alet-les-Bains as its official water sold in the team’s colors.
The bottles will be sold individually during the World Cup in France, at major retailers around the country including Carrefour, Intermarché, Leclerc, Auchan, Système U, Champion, and Monoprix.
The Sidel Group is one of the world’s largest suppliers of packaging equipment for liquid foods. It employs 5,300 people around the world and is a division of Tetra Laval.
