“There, we are processing a batch of 86,000 bottles,” says Annie Le Deunff, director of Luz Environment by opening the doors of its 1,500 m2 warehouse in Verdelais, near Langon in Gironde. The slight rolling noise of the cleaning line and the clashing glass bottles accompanies our visit to this factory with brand new machines.
Since its start-up in March 2023, more than a million bottles of wine of all kinds have already been cleaned industrially, with quality validation by camera at the end of the chain. In 2024, the objective is to give new life to 2.5 million bottles. With 700 million bottles bottled per year in Bordeaux (57% of which are exported), the market is promising.
Since 2018, Annie Le Deunff, a Breton with a career in sales and business management, has been mulling over her idea of organizing a large-scale cleaning of glass bottles, hoping to pave the way for a deposit of these bottles. Five years ago, her idea, which she considers “obvious”, found little response and her project was delayed by the health crisis but she persevered. It went through the Bernard Magrez incubator, which supports it with Ademe, one of its three financiers, with the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and Citéo. Four private investors also supported it and a total of two million euros were committed to launch the site. “There we are victims of success, we are overwhelmed by orders,” she smiles.
1,500 to 2,000 bottles washed per hour
The Gironde site is automated and requires few staff. That day, two men were busy with a pallet. “These are beautiful 820 gram bottles, you have to handle them manually so there is a little exceptional reinforcement,” explains Annie Le Deunff. Normally there are two and not three.” The site has an industrial past which echoes its new activity since a little over twenty years ago, it was the Perrier factory which was installed within these walls, producing Pschitt and Fanta in particular.
The machine, designed specifically by engineers for this project, can clean different types of bottles (Bordeaux, Champagne, etc.) with certain adaptations. It is still an experiment, in the sense that all the very numerous models of glass bottles that the factory can handle have not yet been identified. “We are asking for a sample to be sent to test,” says the director, pragmatically. The site is equipped with a scraper for the capsules, another for the labels before they are cleaned with a soda-based mixture (3%) heated to 75 degrees. The factory, which cleans 1,500 to 2,000 bottles per hour, consumes 5,000 liters of water every day and work is underway to minimize it.
“It’s a little cheaper, and they’re sure to have bottles.”
The customers are small winegrowers from the surrounding area, who transport their bottles by tractor, or Bordeaux cooperatives but also winegrowers from other wine-growing regions, provided that they organize themselves to send large batches. “Wait until you have more or talk to the neighbors,” summarizes Annie Le Deunff. For the operation to be virtuous, the transporter must refuel, i.e. 25,000 bottles. And you need batches with identical bottles to optimize washing sessions.
By opting for reuse, winegrowers pay a little less than by buying new bottles. “But at least they keep their bottles and are sure to have them, which is not always easy with the glassmakers’ deadlines,” argues the director of Luz. She hopes that with communities and the support of new regulations, updated instructions, which take into account the multiplication of intermediaries in the economic circuit, will emerge.
“We need to ramp up production to prove that the model is viable and that it can be reproduced,” she says. Next spring, she plans her first fundraising to move up a gear.