PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2011

BOTTLE MAKING 24 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 04/11 www.petpla.net PETplanet Zoom - Bottle analysis and compari- son by PETplanet Insider in collaboration with the Technical University of Ilmenau- Part II Africa A great diversity In the introductory section of our Zoom Study the overall project together with results were presented with special reference to Germany. Part II is intended to provide you with a few insights into the African database. The study focused on Egypt, Kenya and South Africa. Although, by contrast to Germany data, the database is more restricted, even just a random sample of the bottles in the survey enables us to appreciate that in the comparison Egypt demonstrates a considerably greater degree of diversity as far as the vari- ous bottle volumes are concerned. Concentrating on the categories 0.5l, 1 L as well as 1.5l as already defined in the first Zoom Report and looking at the average values for the different bottle weights, it will be observed that the African bottles con- sistently turn out to be heavier than in Germany, whilst at the same time the Kenyan bottles come very close to the German values; however, it is not possible to identify a fundamental trend here. The low weight of the 1.5l bottles from Egypt deserves particu- lar mention. This anomaly may be attributed to the fact that the mineral water here is non-carbonated and the preferred shape of the bottle used for it tends to be cylindrical with a flat, unstructured base. Interestingly, where the African bottles in the 1.5l category are concerned, these also comprise non-carbonated beverages, Fig. 1: Number of bottles recorded for Africa by country and volume