When we look into the Fragrance industry history, milestones are made by the incredible talent coming together at one stage. The sublime and the unexpected would be generated by the brilliant minds of its time with one common goal: create something never done before and explore an untapped territory. When CHANEL launched CHANEL N°5 back in 1921, it was a true revolution motivated by bringing to the world something never done before.
Since then, and one hundred years later, CHANEL has continued innovating in the fragrance business. This year, together with the POCHET Group, they are launching the first-ever high-quality recycled glass. The challenge was tremendous as the expectations were very high. Can the luxury industry have a more responsible attitude and yet maintain its high standards? The answer from CHANEL is YES!
On the occasion of its “100 years of celebrity“, CHANEL N°5 will be the first perfume flacon to incorporate recycled glass while maintaining incomparable purity, brilliance and transparency, close to that of crystal.
CHANEL And POCHET Group: A Pioneering Approach
2021 is the year in which the fragrance industry makes a bold move towards a more responsible business. The teams of CHANEL and POCHET DU COURVAL have combined their know-how to rethink glass manufacturing. Both companies decided to unite their talents in a common approach in favour of sustainable development.
“Our goal was to develop high-end recycled glass that meets the qualities of excellence and creativity of Maison CHANEL“
Maison POCHET
The result of this collaboration is virtuous in more than one way. It encourages the circular economy, reduces the use of natural resources and reduces the carbon impact while preserving the aesthetics of the mythical perfume. According to Maison POCHET, on average, one million bottles produced with new-generation recycled glass save more than 25 tonnes of virgin raw materials.
According to the French Fragrance Foundation, more than 152’000 fragrance bottles, in general, are sold in France every single day, and this means more than 55 million bottles every single year. With the development of new emerging markets, the fragrance glass manufacturing industry will grow by 3.5% every year until 2026.
CHANEL being a market leader, any moves towards sustainability will significantly influence the entire industry. It will be interesting to see what other luxury brands will do after such an outstanding announcement.
A Story of Recycled Glass With An Incomparable Quality
If you wonder why never before a high-quality recycled glass bottle was created, the answer is easy: because it is complicated, and generally, manufacturers ended with disappointing results. As you can imagine, the creation of this bottle turned out to be a real technological challenge because its crystalline transparency is based on the purity of the used raw materials.
Not all glasses have the same composition depending on their uses. Glass for perfumery is the most transparent and brightest. Therefore, recycled glass can affects its quality. To obtain an impeccable result, POCHET DU COURVAL had to master each step of the value chain and develop an innovative industrial process with its partners to guarantee high quality.
The Pochet Group has been working for several years to integrate recycled glass into glass manufacturing. This initiative is called the SEVA glass. The challenge is tremendous as to obtain a very transparent and luminous glass, the raw material needs to be as pure as possible. The objective for the Pochet Group was to remove the iron particles that the bottles store during their life cycle to maintain the perfect transparency of the material. Therefore, the glassmaker has entered into a partnership with a specialized recycling company to perform a “super-sorting” of the cullet and thus guarantee the purity of its glass paste despite the integration of recycled material.
The collaboration with CHANEL allowed the glass manufacturer to go beyond their own SEVA standards by creating SEVA3. While other recycled glasses exist within the group, these qualities do not provide the crystalline shine and transparency obtained with SEVA3. It is for sure a true breakthrough.
CHANEL N°5 will be the first perfume bottle to incorporate the recycled SEVA3 glass from Pochet du Courval. When innovation meets luxury, only great things happen.
“Faithful to Maison CHANEL’s requirements, every detail has been carefully considered: the colour, the qualities of transparency, purity and brilliance of this glass as well as its resistance have been rigorously evaluated“
Maison CHANEL
CHANEL N°5 Eau de Parfum in limited edition 100 ml is the first fragrance to benefit from this innovation which will be gradually rolled out to other CHANEL Perfumes from 2022. This project is also part of a long term collaborative approach between the two companies, placing eco-responsibility at the heart of research and development of CHANEL products.
José Amorim
Information sourced by the author for luxuryactivist.com. All content is copyrighted with no reproduction rights available. Images are for illustration purposes only and the property of Maison CHANEL.
