The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2019–2026
Caramma's breast-like bottle lets the baby set the pace — Red Dot Best of the Best 2026
A Copenhagen start-up spent five years turning breastfeeding's vacuum, rhythm and closeness into a silicone bottle; Red Dot named it Best of the Best 2026.
Caramma ApS
What it had to solve
When breastfeeding fails or feeds are shared between caregivers, families fall back on bottles built decades ago: fast gravity-fed flow, feeding lying on the back, milk touching plastic. The founders wanted a bottle that preserved breastfeeding's rhythm, vacuum and intimacy instead of replacing it.
How it works
Caramma Support Bottle is a Copenhagen-designed baby bottle that won the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2026 'Best of the Best'. The jury described it as putting 'the relationship between the infant and the caregiver at the heart of the design' — a phrase that captures the product's whole premise: feeding is not just nutrition, it is bonding.
The bottle was co-founded by Rie Maktabi Grue Duus and Monika Havnø, who each had two children and lived through breastfeeding difficulties. Noticing that the bottles on the market shared nothing with breastfeeding, they spent five years — with more than 100 families and health professionals and over 30 prototypes — developing a double-patented silicone bottle.
The mechanism is a two-part silicone valve in a collapsible silicone body. Instead of gravity pushing milk out, the baby creates a vacuum and controls the flow, pausing naturally like at the breast. Because the bottle is air-free and baby-driven, it works in every feeding position, allowing eye contact and closeness, and milk never touches plastic.
The result was recognised twice: the Danish Design Award 2024, then Red Dot's highest distinction in 2026. Caramma positions the bottle not as an alternative to breastfeeding but as support for the moments families need help — and for every caregiver who shares a feed.
Why it lands
- Five years of co-development with families and health professionals turned an emotional need into tested mechanics rather than styling.
- Copying the breast's vacuum rhythm — not the competitor's bottle — produced a genuinely different product: air-free, baby-paced, position-free.
- Designing for closeness, through eye contact and natural feeding positions, gave it a story that award juries and parents both understand.
- Engineering restraint — 100% silicone, foldable, mono-material — made the novelty credible as a health product rather than a gimmick.
What it did
Won the Danish Design Award 2024, then the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2026 'Best of the Best', the competition's highest distinction, with the jury praising it for putting 'the relationship between the infant and the caregiver at the heart of the design'.
What you can take
A stuck category can be rebooted by copying nature's existing solution: instead of iterating on other bottles, Caramma re-derived the bottle from the biology and emotion of the breast.
Since then
Caramma launched commercially with small (150 ml) and large (300 ml) bottles plus a Support Kit, distributed across Europe from Denmark. The double-patented vacuum system is the company's core asset as it expands beyond its home market. For a young start-up, Red Dot's 'Best of the Best' is its biggest external validation, and the company frames it as evidence that meals are about connection and security as much as function.
Sources
- Caramma ApS Interview with Rie Maktabi Grue Duus, Monika Havnø
- About — Caramma
- Caramma vinder Red Dot Award 'Best of the Best' for bedste innovation 2026
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