Diageo has announced that it will trial a paper-based bottle for Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur. 

Diageo's Dry Molded Fiber bottle, produced in partnership with PA Consulting and Swedish company PulPac, is 90% paper and has been designed for recycling in standard paper streams. 

The trial bottle also includes a thin plastic liner and a foil seal, which can also be recycled in standard paper streams. 

As part of the trial, a total of 2,000 80ml bottles will be available to customers at Time Out Festival in Barcelona over the weekend. 

It is the first public-facing trial that the bottles have undergone and will test how the paper-based bottles travel from the filling site in Ireland to Barcelona. The trial will also test how customers interact with the material and how they understand the sustainability credentials of the paper bottle. 

Ewan Andrew, President of Global Supply Chain & Procurement and Chief Sustainability Officer at Diageo, said the new trial reflected Diageo's ambition to bring more sustainable products to the market. 

"When it comes to our packaging, we’re taking an approach of progress over perfection, knowing our packaging will need to evolve along with consumer needs and technological advancements," Andrew said in a statement.

"The consumer is becoming more sustainability savvy and we believe we can meet that need using our design and innovation to bring premium products and more sustainable solutions together." 

Diageo quoted a study that found that 68% of consumers have expressed a desire to buy more sustainable products.

However, only 12% of customers regularly shop more sustainably due to the price of doing so. 

Jamie Stone, Design and Innovation Expert at PA Consulting, said the production of molded fiber bottles is a "huge step forward". 

"We are delighted that the Diageo Baileys Minis are now hitting the consumer market. Dry molded fiber bottles are a huge step forward, setting new standards in the world of more sustainable packaging," Stone said,

"But this is only the beginning. PulPac’s dry molded fiber technology has immense potential: not only is it water-saving, energy-efficient, and recyclable, but it is also viable at commercial manufacturing speeds and scale." 

In March, Diageo announced the trial of 30,000 bottles of Baileys in an aluminum format across selected airports in Europe (Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt), with an anticipated 44% reduction in carbon versus the current glass bottle.

The new packaging trials are part of Diageo’s wider 10-year ESG action plan ‘Society 2030: Spirit of Progress'.