Sail away, sail away, sail away

Working in the distillery, listening to Enya sing about sailing away (because we are THAT uncool), we’re thinking about the Meishan Bridge, the container ship that is bringing our bottles from the UK. We’ve been able to track her progress across oceans via satellite, which is kinda cool but also frustrating. Soon, we hope that our bottles will be made right here in Aotearoa, because clearly, as a company that is trying to reduce its environmental footprint, it makes sense to source the receptacles for our gin from as close to home as possible. Continuing to ship them half way around the world isn’t our plan, and it’s not the plan of Frugalpac (who invented the paperboard bottle) either. Their business model is to have bottle machines installed around the world, so that they can be made locally. We’re excited to be the first in Australasia to bring a product to market in this bottle-of-the-future, but we very much hope that others choose to follow our lead and eschew the glass option. We won’t mind if the Frugal bottle comes to dominate the shelves of the gin section in every liquor store around the country, because of the greater good that would represent.

Our issue is that we haven’t been able to find a spare $2.6 million down the side of the sofa, so it won’t be us who buys the Frugal bottle manufacturing machinery. And until there’s demand than more from one Wellington micro-distillery, no-one else is going to want to invest that amount either. So we need people to champion this bottle (and our gin too, of course!), making it clear to anyone who DOES have a spare million or two that there’s money to be made in a greener choice. And if you do, you’ll be helping to change the world a little bit for the better :)