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From earth's natural elements

Inside the O-I Glass Making Process

Glass packaging is pure, made from natural elements.
Out of fire and sand, iconic, brand-building O-I glass containers take shape.

We create our glass packaging using the highest quality standards and expertise developed throughout our rich
history of innovation and passion for glass.

Inside the O-I Glass Making Process

Glass packaging is pure, made from natural elements.
Out of fire and sand, iconic, brand-building O-I glass containers take shape.

We create our glass packaging using the highest quality standards and expertise developed throughout our rich
history of innovation and passion for glass.

Explore now

1 Raw Material

Like every other manufacturing process, making glass begins with raw materials. Fortunately, glass is infinitely and 100% recyclable, so cullet (recycled glass) is our main ingredient. Other raw materials needed for glass are silica sand, soda ash and limestone. As we source raw materials locally, the impact on the environment is limited as much as possible.

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2 Weighing & mixing station

The required quantities of sand, soda ash, and limestone are weighed and mixed together to create what we call the batch mixture. After that, we add cullet. Although there are different recipes for different types of glass, colours and container shapes, cullet is usually the biggest ingredient.

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3 Furnace control room

To make glass that meets our quality standards in every aspect, the conditions inside the furnace are carefully managed from the control room using a computerised system.

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4 Furnace

O-I uses different kinds of furnaces, with either regenerative or oxy-fuel technology. The furnace is heated by gas, oil and/or electricity, to a temperature of roughly 1550° Celsius. The furnace operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and can process up to several hundred tonnes of glass per day, depending on its size. Many of our plants have multiple furnaces.

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5 Refiner

After several hours in the furnace, the molten glass flows to the refiner where it stays for a short period. The molten glass is then split into smaller streams that make their way to the forehearth.

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6 Forehearth

The forehearth brings the temperature of the molten glass to a uniform level, after which it enters the feeder. At the end of the feeder, glass is pushed through 1 to 4 holes, after which shears cut the elongated molten glass into gobs. The automated system sends the gobs to the forming machines.

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7 Forming machine

The temperature of the gobs is around 1100° Celsius when they’re dropped into the first mould (called blank) to create the rough shape – or parison. The forming machine transfers the parison to a second mould where it receives its final shape. When the container leaves the forming machine, the temperature of the glass has dropped to roughly 700° Celsius.

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8 Hot end coater

The hot end coater applies a base coat to the exterior of each container to improve the adhesion of the cold end coating later in the process.

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9 Annealing lehr

As the exterior surface of the glass containers cools down more rapidly than their inside, they need to be reheated and cooled down more slowly to release stress and strengthen the glass. To do so, they go through the annealing lehr.

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10 Cold end coater

Following the annealing lehr, our containers enter “the cold end” of the plant. The cold end coater applies a final exterior coating to the containers. The temperature of the containers is now an average of 85° Celsius.

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11 Inspection devices

Before the containers are packed for shipment, each individual container is checked by a combination of automated and human inspection.

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12 Palletizer

After successfully passing all quality checks, the containers are conveyed to the palletizer.

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13 Shrink wrap unit

In the last step of packing, the shrink wrap unit applies a giant plastic bag over the pallet and shrinks it to properly seal the pallet.

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14 Forklift loading pallets

Our bottles and jars are stored in our warehouse until they are to be transported to food and beverage manufacturers, who will fill them with their products before distributing through supermarkets and other retail outlets or to hotels, restaurants and caterers.

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