Why bottles and glasses are scarce and expensive

Dusseldorf The Henkell Freixenet winery fills an estimated 300 million bottles of sparkling wine, prosecco and cava each year. But since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the world’s largest sparkling wine producer has had problems getting enough glass bottles on the market. “Container glass has become very scarce and expensive,” says company boss Andreas Brokemper. “So far there has been no relaxation in the supply of glass bottles.”

He cites the destruction of two important glassworks in Ukraine as one reason. “The factories had capacities of around two billion bottles a year,” explains Brokemper.

Added to this is the elimination of Russia as a supplier country due to EU sanctions. “This resulted in a high additional demand for container glass,” explains Nikolaus Wiegand, head of glass manufacturer Wiegand from Upper Franconia. “The glass industry cannot increase capacities flexibly, that takes years.” Wiegand was also no longer able to serve all customer requests. “In an emergency, we had to supply wineries with brown instead of green sparkling wine bottles.” The light green color was also temporarily discontinued.