Gentlebrand’s No-Label PET bottle for Montbest water in Korea

Korea Crystal Beverage, in business for over 48 years, commissioned Gentlebrand to design a premium, sustainable packaging solution for its leading Montbest spring water brand. In compliance with Korea’s new efforts aimed at reducing the use of plastics that are difficult to recycle, the result for Korea Crystal Beverage’s ultra-pure spring water brand Montbest is a more sustainable image by introducing a ‘no-label’ bottle.

A popular brand across the Korean market and winner of 3 stars of the International Taste Institute for two consecutive years, Montbest is widely promoted in the country and is specially conceived for people who seek 360-degree wellness, from an active lifestyle to environmentally sustainable choices. For Montbest, ultra-pure water sourced from the granite rocks of Mount Gukmangbong, the rocks act as a natural filter for the water, enriching it with precious minerals. This is fully reflected by the etymology of the brand name, which in Korean means ‘the best gift for you, with water carefully bottled from the spring at the foot of the mountain.’

Restyling the packaging of such an iconic product by removing the label meant designing and developing a new product identity where the brand’s core values could be conveyed exclusively through the logo, the purple colorway, and the details embossed directly onto the bottle. Creativity and technical know-how have been key in the project development, and Gentlebrand, with its value proposition of delivering feasible packaging solutions, attempted to upgrade the existing packaging and strike the right balance between the size of the logo and the information required by law, now embossed on the body of the bottle, making it visible and, most importantly, legible.

The new Montbest bottle, which comes in 330ML, 500ML, 1L, and 2L sizes, is now square-shaped and features grooves along corners that give it a premium look and feel by reflecting more light while also improving the user experience by providing a better grip. With extensive know-how and expertise in every aspect of packaging feasibility employed, the project went beyond the development of the bottles and also involved prototyping and laboratory tests to assess the new containers’ mechanical performance and verification of the quality and legibility of the logos.

The outcome of this successful, customer-friendly project has been the manufacture of 68 molds for existing product lines through the key partnership with Competek, a French company specializing in packaging solutions. The Italy-based Gentlebrand is a packaging design agency providing unique packaging solutions in PET, cans, glass, and other materials for the FMCG industry. It integrates technical know-how with creativity, the ‘packaging tailors’ provide customers only feasible packaging solutions. Among its services are brand strategy, brand identity, packaging design, communication design, prototyping, and quality checking.