The bottle re-design was a fascinating process, De Groot said.
"When you start messing with something as deeply rooted in human culture as a bottle, you can only mess with it so much before it begins turning into something else.
"Everyone knows what a bottle looks like and what it should look like - if you drop the shoulders on it too much suddenly it looks like tomato sauce, if you move the shoulders too high suddenly it looks like a jam jar ... if you make it a little bit rounder, suddenly people think it's orange juice.
"It's tiny differences that make a big impact ultimately."
The students' design concepts included a bottle which turned into a telescope when emptied, and another with mountains on the inside, he said.
As part of their research, some also set up online forums, chatting with potential consumers in China and Korea, De Groot said.
"Once you start to look into the drinking habits over there, it's really fascinating because it's quite different, it's much more familial, done much more at home or in restaurants, not so much in bars and in those environments.
"Someone else has to pour your glass with two hands and so if you're thinking about it like that, a 330ml bottle doesn't really wash."
The students experimented with the size of the bottle, paying particular emphasis to the number eight, which was considered lucky in China, De Groot said.
They came up with two final sizes -- 888ml and and 258ml.
"Specific numerical arrangements mean specific things and these two were both very positive and pointed to having a slightly specific value to that market," he said.
Out of four final designs, one designed by students Quentin Chan and Joshua Logito was selected by O-I as the preferred example, he said.
O-I business development manager Bayard Sinnema said the bottle design had been offered to around 40 breweries. Once enough bottles were ordered, production could begin.
Epic founder Luke Nicholas had expressed interested, as had Craig Cooper from Bach Brewing, Sinnema said.
The bottle would also be presented to potential customers at the New Zealand Brewers' Guild trade show in September, he said.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade were also supporting the project.
The Provider
• Designed by Unitec students for New Zealand craft brewers hoping to expand in the Asian market.
• Comes in two sizes, 258ml and 888ml. Both numbers are considered lucky in Asia.
• Five potential markets identified: China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.
• Epic and Bach Brewing considering using the design.
