Glass Bottles and Jars Explained: Definitions and Classification in China's Glass Packaging Industry

In China's glass packaging industry, glass bottles and jars are a foundational category in packaging containers, and clarifying their definition and classification provides a basic reference for industry communication.

Industry definitions describe glass bottles and jars as hollow glass products that can be sealed with a cap or stopper and filled with various materials in measured quantities. They are widely used as packaging containers for beverages, alcoholic drinks, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, stationery and cosmetics. These containers are typically transparent, easy to clean, chemically stable, resistant to contaminating their contents, highly airtight, strong in storage performance, rich in shape and decoration options, reusable through recovery, and made from abundant raw materials. However, they are also fragile and have a high weight-to-capacity ratio. Advances in process technology are gradually addressing these drawbacks.

Among glass products, glass bottles and jars have the highest output. In 1980, global glass product output was 68 Mt, of which glass bottles and jars accounted for 40.8 Mt.

Between 2000 BC and 500 BC, humans were already able to produce hollow glass vessels. After the blowpipe was introduced in 200 BC, the oil and winemaking sectors began using hollow glass as containers. During the Roman Empire, demand for glass containers rose, and most items had round bottoms that required iron or wooden supports. Later, mold development for blown glass enabled flat-bottom bottles that did not need supports. From the 5th to the 15th century, pressing, drawing and blowing techniques advanced considerably, laying the groundwork for mechanized glassmaking. In 1867, the German Siemens brothers applied a regenerative continuous melting tank furnace to the glass industry, making large-scale production of glass bottles and jars possible.

From 1880 to 1890, forming technologies emerged for making wide-mouth bottles with the press-and-blow method and narrow-mouth bottles with the blow-and-blow method. In 1900, the first motor-driven bottle-making machine appeared. In 1904–1905, M.J. Owens of the United States developed a fully automatic vacuum suction-type bottle-making machine. From 1910 onward, gob feeders began to develop. By 1914, the semi-automatic blow-and-blow process had matured. In 1925, the American Hartford-Empire Company successfully developed the individual section (IS) bottle-making machine, initially using the blow-and-blow method and later expanding to press-and-blow production.

The IS machine remains the dominant model today and continues to evolve toward multi-machine and multi-gob configurations.

In China, hollow glass containers were already being blown with blowpipes during the Tang and Song dynasties. The modern glass industry took shape between 1904 and 1908. Shanghai Jinghua Glass Factory, established in 1931, was China's first plant to continuously manufacture glass bottles and jars using cross-flame and horseshoe-flame regenerative tank furnaces and automatic bottle-making machines. After the 1950s, a number of larger modern bottle-making factories were built. In the 1980s, lightweighting became the biggest improvement in glass bottle and jar production, helping save raw materials and fuel, raise production speed and lower transport costs.

Glass bottles and jars come in many types, and they can be classified in several ways. ① By shape, there are general bottles and jars, handled bottles and jars, and tubular bottles and jars, with filling capacities from 1 ml to 25 l. ② By base shape, there are round, oval, square, rectangular and flat bottles and jars, with round versions being the most common. ③ By mouth size, there are wide-mouth, narrow-mouth and spray-mouth bottles and jars. A mouth inner diameter greater than 30 mm, with no shoulder or a minimal shoulder, is called a wide-mouth bottle, often used for semi-fluid, powdered or block solid products; an inner diameter below 30 mm is called a narrow-mouth bottle, commonly used for various fluid products.

④ By the fit between mouth and closure, types include continuous-thread, cork-stopper, pouring, crown-cap, roll-on cap, plastic cap, spray, press-on twist-off, side-seal pry-off, ground-glass stopper, handled and tubular mouths. Mouth dimensions and tolerances are standardized. ⑤ By use requirements, there are one-way bottles and jars, which are discarded after a single use, and returnable bottles and jars, which can be recovered and circulated multiple times. Beyond these, the industry recognizes additional classification dimensions.