Germany is one of the world’s top five beer-drinking countries with most consumers buying their beers in returnable crates, representing 73% of sales.

Although widely respected as a world-leading sustainable circular economy, and despite the fact crates are returnable, the production of new crates still requires millions of tonnes of fresh plastic every single year.

As a net zero plastic brand on a mission to protect the ocean, Corona couldn’t enter the crate market unless we found a different, even more sustainable solution.

Ocean Crates. The world’s most sustainable branded bottle crate.

With millions of tonnes of fishing gear entering the ocean every year, we created a new way to recycle maritime waste, and made the first crates using old fishing nets, lines, and ropes that would’ve ended up underwater.

An ambitious project at scale to develop an entirely new sustainable material, creating an ocean design pattern unique to each individual crate.

Not a limited edition or a one-off stunt, this is the only way Corona sells beer crates in Germany and always will be.

In their first year alone, our Ocean Crates have kept hundreds of tonnes of plastic out of the sea, while helping Corona sustainably enter and grow in the crate market.

They’re a blueprint for the future of the industry, encouraging other brands to rethink their own production processes and making a world-leading sustainable circular economy, even more sustainable.

Our strategy was simple, make an existing behaviour even more sustainable. Forgoing asking our audience to adopt a new behaviour, simply a new brand.

German beer drinkers were already at the forefront of sustainable consumption with the use of returnable crates, but we wanted to show them that together we could do more; with our innovative new material and their choice of beer.

A simple yet powerful call to action - Buy a Crate. Help save the Ocean - demonstrated that simply by choosing Corona Ocean Crates they are playing their part in protecting our waters and the life below it.

Doing things in a completely new way called for a completely new material. One that meant maritime plastic waste harming the ocean could instead be used to help it.

Here's how it works.

STEP 1

Old fishing nets, lines and ropes (made of plastic), alongside older crates are collected for recycling, saving them from ending up in the sea.

STEP 2

Everything is sorted, cleaned, shredded and converted into pellets to form the first of its kind sustainable material used to make Ocean Crates.

STEP 3

When broken down, these same fishing nets, lines and ropes produce a different wave pattern finish on every crate, turning a dull piece of packaging into something unique.

Once no longer in use, they can be fully recycled and turned into other crates. The new Corona crates will not be wasted, or end up in a landfill, which means they are 100% circular.

It’s been a huge commercial success helping the brand grow sales value by +48% and selling over 450,000 crates.

But more importantly, every crate is made with 2KG of recycled plastic and maritime waste, meaning every crate purchased has a tangible impact on ocean plastic pollution.

With such positive consumer uptake, we’ve already ensured that over 700 tonnes of plastic is unable to make it into our oceans, that’s the equivalent of 35 million plastic bottles.

Not a limited edition or a one-off stunt, this is truly scalable solution and the only way Corona sells beer crates in Germany and always will be. So in 20 years, when they are ready to be fully recycled again, we'll have kept an estimated 11,000 tonnes of plastic out of our waters and achieving our objective of entering the German beer market while progressing our purpose.