“Aeons wraps olive oil in paper,” proclaimed the Packaging Journal. Paper olive oil bottles may be hard to picture, but if we think of these innovative olive oil containers as an evolution of the long familiar bag-in-box packaging for wine and olive oil, the solutions adopted by Enia Foods and Jordan Olive Oil seem both practical and environmentally sound.
Can olive oil be sold in paper bottles?
Yes! Enia Foods is proud of making the “World’s 1st ‘Plant Based’ Paper Bottle Packaging for Olive Oil” commercially available. Designed by the innovative British packaging manufacturer Frugalpac, the Frugal Bottle for olive oil has impressed both consumers and professionals. “Since 2023, the AEONS Exclusive Paper Bottle has been successfully distributed to several European countries, as well as to Canada and the USA,” explained Enia Foods quality manager and customer support professional Eleanora Deli.
In 2024, Enia Foods was awarded the Grand Prix at the SIAL Innovation Packaging Awards for AEONS Exclusive Paper Bottle Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. SIAL Paris credited Enia Foods for positioning itself “among companies actively redefining standards within their categories.” Its paper bottle shows that “a traditional product can evolve without abandoning its heritage.”
Olive oil has a longstanding, well-deserved reputation for being good for both people and the planet. Sustainable farming methods such as organic production, regenerative farming, and intercropping can result in even more benefits for humans and the earth. However, packaging and transportation remain a concern, especially for environmentally conscious consumers who do not live in olive oil producing areas.
How do paper olive oil bottles work?
Enia Foods worked with Frugalpac to present flavorful, nutritious Greek extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) in a more sustainable, yet user-friendly package that also protects the EVOO: a Frugal Bottle specially designed for olive oil. The AEONS Exclusive Paper Bottle combines the benefits of a light, protective bag-in-box package with the attractiveness and easy handling of a bottle. In terms of standing on a table, opening, closing, and pouring, the paper bottle works similarly to a glass bottle.
However, inside the recycled paperboard exterior there is a collapsible metallized liner that resembles what is found in bag-in-box packages for olive oil and wine. The bag-in-box packaging is a well-respected option for extra virgin olive oil that has been shown to protect the oil from light and air, while maintaining its quality better and longer than tin-plated steel.
The paper bottles for olive oil can also outperform glass bottles in preventing oxidation. According to Malcolm Waugh, Frugalpac CEO, “unlike a glass bottle, which requires air to displace the liquid as it pours—thereby introducing oxygen to the remaining oil—our liner is designed to vacuum-collapse as the oil is dispensed. This eliminates ‘headspace oxygen,’ effectively halting the oxidation process and preserving the delicate polyphenols, antioxidants, and organoleptic profile of a premium EVOO like AEONS for significantly longer than glass.”
According to Waugh, “the AEONS liner is a high-performance, food-grade laminate engineered for long-term preservation.” It is just the right thickness to offer both “the flexibility required for vacuum-collapse” to keep out air “and the structural integrity needed to prevent migration” of substances between the oil and the packaging.
Are paper olive oil bottles safe and sustainable?
Waugh emphasizes that they are. “We treat food safety as a non-negotiable priority. All Frugal Bottle liners are BPA-free and fully certified to the highest international standards (FDA and EU food-grade). We conduct extensive migration testing to ensure the oil’s chemical purity remains uncompromised. The Frugal Bottle was engineered to prove that the most sustainable choice is also the superior choice for the product’s integrity. By choosing the Frugal Bottle, you are providing the healthiest environment for the oil while using one of the lowest carbon packaging formats for the planet.”
What makes the AEONS Exclusive Paper Bottle eco-friendly? It comes out ahead in production, transportation, and recycling. As Deli reveals, weighing just 83 grams, this package “is up to five times lighter than a normal glass bottle, making it easier to carry and lighter to transport. An independent Life Cycle Analysis by Intertek showed that it has a carbon footprint up to six times (84%) lower than a glass bottle and more than a third less than a bottle made from 100% recycled plastic. It uses up to 77% less plastic than a plastic bottle.” It is made from 94 per cent recycled paper, and “it’s easy to recycle again” by separating the liner from the paper olive oil bottle.
“The paper bottle was a logical next step” for Jordan Olive Oil
Given the impressive resume of the first Frugal Bottle for olive oil, when the team at Jordan Olive Oil was looking for an eco-friendly, EVOO-friendly, and consumer-friendly new type of packaging for their organic extra virgin olive oil, they turned to Frugalpac. The two companies worked together to adapt the Frugal Bottle for easier recycling and pouring.
Keeping the paperboard outer shell, they changed the inner pouch material for this new version from the metallized PET (MET PET) pouch common in bag-in-box wine packaging to a mono-material food-grade polyethylene (PE) pouch with no metal. This tends to be easier to recycle (after the paper shell is separated from the inner pouch), given existing recycling infrastructure for mono-materials. Jordan also added a pouring spout. As Waugh explained, “the Jordan package features a custom-engineered, drip-free pourer specifically calibrated for the unique viscosity of high-quality olive oil.”
Why did Jordan want to use paper bottles for olive oil? Jordan Olive Oil Managing Director Bastian Jordan explains: “we source our olive oil from our own groves on Lesbos, Greece, and we’ve always believed that sustainability shouldn’t stop at how the oil is produced—it should extend to how it reaches the consumer. The paper bottle was a logical next step for us. It’s 84% less CO₂ than glass, five times lighter, and customers genuinely love holding it for the first time. We ran a swap station event at a REWE supermarket in Germany where customers exchanged their old glass oil bottles for paper bottles. The reactions were incredible. People were fascinated.”
Bastian Jordan goes on to point out that “the paper bottle doesn’t change the oil. It changes everything around it: the weight in your shopping bag, the carbon footprint of transport, and the amount of glass that ends up in recycling bins.”
This eco-friendly olive oil packaging sounds ideal; is it too good to be true?
To find out, Greek Liquid Gold discussed these innovative packages with Dr. Kiriaki Zinoviadou, Dean of Perrotis College at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki and Chair of the New Food Product & Business Development MSc program there. She has no connection to the companies or products in this article.
Is there any reason for concern about olive oil’s contact with plastic in the bag-in-box-type packaging of these eco friendly olive oil containers? Zinoviadou does not think so. Since extensive testing has been done on these materials, and European legislation governs their appropriate use for specific purposes, Zinoviadou believes they will be safe for their intended use.
Glass is the most stable material for storing olive oil, Zinoviadou pointed out, because there is no diffusion of the compounds it contains into the oil. However, glass is not ideal in terms of sustainability or oxidation. On the other hand, she said “the bag-in-box concept seems especially beneficial for quality, as no oxygen can enter the product once it is opened, unlike for glass or metal containers.”
After considering details Frugalpac provided about this sustainable olive oil packaging, Zinoviadou stated, “it seems that the two novel packages have been well thought-out and thoroughly examined. The combination of materials that are being used offers full protection against light and oxygen, and it seems that the flavor and aromas can be preserved as effectively as in any other package.” In addition, she values the way paper bottles can help raise consumers’ awareness of sustainability issues.
Paper olive oil bottles may be joining the list of ways to make olive oil even better for humanity and the environment.
Thanks to Enia Foods and Jordan Olive Oil for the photos of their packaging materials.
For more about recent developments, see Greek Olive Product Innovations at the 2026 Food Expo.
About Greek Liquid Gold
The only wide-ranging English-language site focused on news and information from the Greek olive oil world, greekliquidgold.com has helped companies reach consumers in more than 220 countries around the globe since Lisa Radinovsky created it in 2016.
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