South African Breweries Limited is to replace its familiar 750ml "quart" beer bottles with a more up-to-date model, the company said on 16 April 2007. The new returnable bottle will be introduced across four main brands: Castle Lager, Carling Black Label, Hansa Pilsener and Castle Milk Stout. "SAB will invest over half a billion rand and about an extra three million man-hours of work in the switch-over to the new bottle", said SAB spokesperson Shirley Scriven. The phasing-out of the old quart bottle will be gradual, beginning with Cape Town in May 2007 and ending with Polokwane in September 2008. The new and old bottles will both be available for a three-week cross-over period in each region.There are currently 90,000 tons of old glass quart bottles in circulation. Once these have been returned, they will be crushed and recycled. "We decided to make this investment based on a number of key global trends and consumer-demand developments; the new shape complies with new label technology that is being introduced, including a wraparound neck label. Importantly, the new bottle is more durable than the present one, which has a positive environmental impact", said Ms. Scriven
