“Turning back is not an option, but moving forward requires a lot of support and protection”
Petcore Annual Conference 2025
The Petcore Annual Conference 2025 took place in Brussels on February 4-5. More than 370 delegates attended and were able to witness first-hand the PET value chain’s commitment to sustainability and innovation.The conference underlined Petcore Europe’s ability to represent the EU PET value chain as reflected in its growing membership numbers: nine associations and more than 150 organisations, with a cumulative turnover in 2022 of 15 billion € and 27k employees. PETplanet Insider spoke with Antonello Ciotti, President of Petcore Europe.
PETplanet: Firstly, I would like to congratulate you on the successful Petcore Annual Conference 2025. Let’s talk about the European industry, which is currently facing many challenges. The PET and plastics industry is also affected by this. In your opinion, what were the most important key statements on market dynamics and European competitiveness – PET value chain views that were made?
Antonello Ciotti: The main statement is the need to regain competitiveness by requiring the creation of a level playing field. Today, this is not yet the case as a fair implementation of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) is not yet fully clarified. The same is true for the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) which, with 53 Delegated Acts to be defined in the next two years, is requiring a lot of monitoring from the whole value chain. A quote from one of our members sums it up nicely: “We want to invest our resources in operations and not in reporting!”.
PETplanet: Where do you see the strengths of the European PET industry?
Antonello Ciotti: The main strength of the EU industry is its ability to continuously innovate by introducing new technologies for the lightweighting of both PET trays and bottles – including increasing their recycled content – without reducing the importance of consumer safety.
PETplanet: Three highly interesting innovation papers were presented by Alpla & Avantium, Husky and Sipa, well-known `big players´ in the PET industry. What did you find particularly forward-looking about the respective presentations?
Antonello Ciotti: The Alpla & Avantium project provides an interesting view on the opportunities to enhance PET package properties (e.g. higher barrier to CO2 and O2) and visual characteristics, while taking into account the guidelines provided by Petcore Europe’s European PET Bottle Platform (EPBP). Husky and Sipa presented technological innovations which improve the quality control and quality consistency of the final product while at the same time allowing for the smoother inclusion of recycled PET. All these improvements are going to help in driving the concept of circularity within our industry.
PETplanet: Of course, there was also detailed information about sustainability and plastics recycling. Do you think Europe is doing enough? And can it continue to fulfil its pioneering role? What do you hear from the industry, what are the biggest challenges that companies have to overcome if they want to produce sustainably?
Antonello Ciotti: This is a key dilemma facing EU industry in general. It is clear that the new US administration is reducing its focus on the Green Deal, and as a result, EU industry finds itself at a crossroads: turning back is not an option, but moving forward requires a lot of support and protection. Here, the level playing field that I mentioned earlier is a must if the EU is to retain its manufacturing power.
To be more specific, the Green Deal is based on the reduction of fossil energy and its replacement with renewable resources: in the case of PET packaging, this is by the collection of post-consumer bottles and trays for recycling.
The challenge is that in the EU these collection costs are, in some cases, more than ten times higher than the costs faced in developing countries, and the technical advantages that our EU industry has made are not sufficient to plug the gap. So, in order to maintain a future for all our members we need to push the Commission to take action to prevent an unlevel playing field by the proper standardisation and verification of material that is entering the EU.
PETplanet: The presentations by EU speakers on the latest regulatory updates and new implementations are particularly important for the participants at the conference. Would you please be so kind and briefly summarise the status of the implementation of the PPWR and what new technologies and trade rules are being considered by the EU?
Antonello Ciotti: Before talking about PPWR, whose implementation deadline is 2030, let’s look at the SUPD which already came into force on January 1st this year.
As the SUP is a Directive, it has to be implemented by the EU Member States and we run the risk of seeing a different implementation in each of them. Moreover, it is not yet clear how the mandatory recycling content is defined: for example, it seems that flakes to polymer are not considered in the definition, and there are no penalties for brands that do not apply the 25% recycled content stipulation simply because the target is for the ‘average member state’.
This situation will be amended by the implementation of the PPWR, where the target is for each brand, for each of the brand’s production sites and for each bottle size produced.
Petcore Europe is working with the Commission to address and clarify all these dichotomies.
PETplanet: No circulation without standardisation. What’s new from EPBP and TCEP?
Antonello Ciotti: Our leading Working Groups in circularity (EPBP and TCEP) have been asked to attend and support the work led by CEN on standardisation. Our technical managers are now fully engaged in the bottle (where the EPBP guidelines are the reference) and tray CEN working groups, where the definition of recyclability and circularity will be turned into standardisation rules. In parallel, the EPBP technical team is working to finalise the circularity test protocol and design guidelines. These activities are ahead of the CEN ones.
PETplanet: An important topic on the second day of the conference was depolymerisation in packaging and textiles. Can you please give an assessment of developments in these areas?
Antonello Ciotti: We can summarise the state of play by saying that the industry is ready to invest substantially – BUT, without a clear legislative perspective, it is currently refraining from investing.
Eastman represents a clear case. They have postponed a multibillion-Euro investment in France due to the lack of clarity on the classification of the final product. We are all still waiting to understand the Commission position regarding the Mass Balance methodology that allows a clear identification of the recycled content in a product.
PETplanet: Of course, many other important topics were also discussed and current reports from other working groups were presented. If you compare this year’s event with previous ones, what was special? And how optimistic are you for the future?
Antonello Ciotti: I am very optimistic for the future of our event as I see that year after year the presenters, the number of attendees, the sponsors and the number of media partners is growing. This year we also had the best ever representation by European Commission Directorate’s General. We were even forced to limit the number of innovation papers and presenters this year as the agenda was already fully packed!
Arrivederci to the next Conference, most probably in Italy!
PETplanet: Thank you very much Mr Ciotti.