The reusable packaging debate has long focused on one question: how do manufacturers encourage more bottles to come back? A collaboration between Vetropack, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) and technology specialist Myneral Labs suggests the industry may need to ask a different one instead — how much more value can manufacturers unlock once every bottle has its own digital identity?

The partnership has received recognition at the German Packaging Awards after successfully demonstrating a system that allows every reusable glass bottle to be individually identified and tracked throughout its lifecycle using permanent Data Matrix codes. While serialisation has become commonplace in pharmaceuticals and increasingly in food safety, applying it to reusable glass bottles represents a significant technical milestone for the beverage industry.

Rather than treating bottles as anonymous assets circulating through the supply chain, each container effectively becomes a source of operational data.

Moving from estimates to evidence

Until now, most refillable bottle pools have relied on statistical modelling and historical assumptions to estimate bottle losses, circulation rates and replacement requirements. The new system replaces assumptions with real-time data.

Camera systems installed on CCEP’s filling line scan every bottle, recording information about its movement through the returnable packaging system. Manufacturers gain visibility over how often individual bottles are reused, where losses occur, which bottles fail quality inspections and how efficiently assets move through the network.

For operations teams, that translates into considerably more accurate inventory planning.

Instead of holding excess bottle stock as a buffer against uncertainty, companies can align purchasing and production with actual demand. Better utilisation of existing bottle pools could also reduce the number of replacement bottles that need manufacturing, lowering both material consumption and capital expenditure.

A digital twin for every bottle

The innovation is perhaps best viewed as creating a digital twin for reusable packaging.

Each physical bottle carries a permanent identifier that links it to a growing history of data throughout its service life. Every filling cycle, inspection and rejection becomes part of that bottle’s digital record.

That creates opportunities well beyond inventory management.

Packaging engineers could identify whether certain bottle designs experience higher failure rates. Quality teams can understand precisely when and why bottles leave circulation. Logistics managers can optimise bottle flows between filling plants, distribution centres and retailers with far greater confidence than today’s pooled estimates allow.

In effect, reusable packaging begins operating more like an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) asset than a passive container.

Supporting circular manufacturing

For manufacturers investing heavily in reusable packaging systems, transparency has often been the missing ingredient.

Circular economy models depend on assets remaining in circulation for as long as possible. Without accurate visibility, however, improving those systems becomes difficult.

Digital tracking provides measurable evidence of how many reuse cycles bottles actually achieve, allowing businesses to benchmark performance, identify inefficiencies and quantify the environmental value delivered by refillable packaging.

As sustainability reporting becomes increasingly data-driven, that level of traceability could become commercially valuable alongside its operational benefits.

More than a packaging innovation

Although the project centres on glass bottles, its wider significance lies in the convergence of packaging engineering and digital manufacturing.

Food and drink producers are increasingly connecting equipment, products and supply chains through data. Extending that connectivity to reusable packaging creates another source of operational intelligence that can support automation, predictive planning and resource efficiency.

The pilot has already demonstrated full digital traceability on CCEP’s Bad Neuenahr production line, with plans to expand the approach across a larger bottle pool.