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Sklárny Moravia Glassworks: exclusive bottles from the heart of Europe By Sklárny Moravia
The Czech company Sklárny Moravia has established itself on the market with a unique offer: it can produce small series of very sophisticated bottles. These are ideal for smaller distilleries or limited editions of multinational giants. Now the company is reaching out to customers in the UK. sobrno is a small village in a valley in the CzechMoravian Highlands. For almost two centuries, its people have been united by a glassmaking tradition that dates back to 1827. In recent times, the local independent familyrun glassworks has established itself as a producer of premium bottles with a large proportion of manual labour. The combination of automated machines and the skills of the Úsobrno glassmakers allows the company to offer its clients exceptional both flexibility and affordable prices.
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“We have furnaces for 45 and 22 tons of glass. We are the one of the smallest manufacturers in the world who makes container glass with such small furnaces,” says Radim Bondy, Sales Director. The bottles are produced by two automated machines, each with six single gob stations with variable-weight feeder. Although they do not handle the same volumes as their high-volume counterparts, they allow for a much greater variability and more complex product shapes. The moulds can be assembled like a jigsaw. Customers can choose different neck shapes according to the caps or add embossing to already finished bottle designs or experiment with the colour.
Therefore, Sklárny Moravia glassworks is also a perfect partner for start-ups. It has already assisted in launching several distilleries which tried out the packaging in smaller batches and then moved on to large producers. The company management is happy with this approach. Rather than aiming to produce millions of bottles a year, they are interested in special projects.
Typical orders are batches of 10,000 to 100,000 pieces. The capacity is approx. 25,000–30,000 bottles per day on each line, which is roughly the capacity of a truckload or shipping container and corresponds in number to limited editions of premium alcohol. In the so-called parallel production, the company is able to produce even smaller batches of bottles down to 5,000.
“We have retained the production of apothecary jars, the classic ground reagent bottles that you may remember from old pharmacies. One of our British clients has had their caps modified and is bottling gin in them,” says Bondy, smiling.
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Another unique feature in the glass-making world is the range of coloured glass. Apart from Sklárny Moravia, very few other European companies are able to produce pitch-black opaque glass. Úsobrno glassworks also produces special violet glass for a Dutch customer.
Global companies like St Dalfour or Pernod Ricard are among the customers buying the limited
