“There’s a tendency towards more stylishly designed and longer bottle tops. The look of the top on a Campari, vermouth, cognac or whisky bottle matters. Producers have their individual style and many are interesting in developing the design together with us,” says Francesco Goria, who owns the Italian firm Alplast.
Situated in the village of Tiglioli d’Asti to the west of Alessandria, Alplast is a major supplier of aluminium bottle tops, not just to Italian drinks producers, but to much of the rest of the world. A stop off to look at the consignment notes in the packing department shows that they top the bottles of most alcoholic drinks.
Francesco Goria is a modest person, but does appreciate the local gastronomic specialties. Asti is well known both for its red wines and for the sparkling Asti Spumante.
“It was in this connection that the company developed in the first years after the war,” Francesco explains. “My father Renato Goria started it all. He traveled round the distilleries and kept being asked to find tops for the bottles. The producers of Martini, for example, bought metal corks from England, because they weren’t produced in Italy.”
Self-developed technology
Renato Goria decided to build a packaging factory, but he had no machinery. This he developed, experimenting together with his friends. There has since been a good deal of development of this type of machinery in Italy.
Production started in 1950 in Torino, continuing at this factory until 1970. Then it was transferred to Tigliole d’Asti, in the home area of the Goria family. The firm is still a purely family affair, led by the brothers Francesco and Erminio.
As aluminium and plastic became the main production materials, Alplast seemed a good name. The firm now exports to the whole of Europe and beyond. The tops are shaped in Tigliole, while the aluminium foil is coated by a firm in Lecco near Milano.
“Hydro Aluminium Slim has a long supplier relationship with the firm in Tigliole, but has other larger competitors who also supply foil for bottle top production,” explains their sales representative Stefano Luoni, who is in regular contact with Alplast. In total Alplast produces around four billion bottle caps, requiring 4,000 tonnes aluminium a year.
Aluminium for glass
Aluminium and plastic both compete with and complement each other, or as Goria puts it: “Aluminium is used for screw tops for glass bottles, but plastic bottles should have plastic tops. Again it is a question of design and style. Increasing focus is directed to the design of the tops, and we work together with our customers on this. They tend to follow our recommendations, because we know what is realistic.”
Francesco Goria mentions three criteria the tops must comply with: firstly function; secondly technical properties – that they do not leak; and thirdly there is the aesthetic element – the bottle tops must look good.
The various brands have developed their distinctive colors, such as Campari with gold, Vermouth with red or white, etc. “But there is no hard and fast rule, apart from the fact that they should look good,” says Francesco Goria.
