Wine may soon be distributed in flat plastic bottles, in a move that could reduce carbon emissions and costs in the industry’s supply chain.

The bottles are a novel alternative to the glass model that has remained largely unchanged since the 19th century.

The global wine industry is estimated to use more than 35bn glass bottles a year (including 1.8bn in the UK alone), and transportation – typically in cases of six or 12 – involves large volumes of unused airspace.

Garçon Wines, launched in 2017, claimed its bottle was the first that could be posted through a letterbox. Until now it has been used only for novelty gifts, but the company said it was in talks with wine manufacturers and suppliers about producing the bottles on a much larger scale.

Made from recycled PET, the bottle has a plastic cap, making recycling easier. It takes up 40% less space and is 87% lighter than conventional bottles.

The company’s carton for 10 flat bottles, being launched at a packaging conference in Birmingham on Wednesday, would hold only four glass bottles of the same 75cl volume.

The 10-bottle case is being launched at a packaging conference in Birmingham. Photograph: Courtesy of Garçon Wines

Santiago Navarro, the chief executive and co-founder of Garçon Wines, said normal wine cases resulted in “unnecessarily costly logistics, excessive packaging, wasted resources and a grotesque carbon footprint. This is because the bottles being used are not fit for purpose in a 21st-century world of e-commerce, complex supply chains and, most importantly, climate change.”

A pallet loaded with flat bottle cases could carry 1,040 bottles of wine, compared with 456 round bottles.

Navarro said the recycled plastic used for the bottles was safe and did not affect the taste. The company said it used technology that reduced the ingress of oxygen into the bottles for about a year.

Extrapolating figures from a study by the government’s waste advisory body Wrap, an 87% weight saving in a wine bottle would reduce carbon emissions by more than 500g per bottle.