PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2011

REGIONAL MARKET REPORTS 10 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 10/11 www.petpla.net Lithuania / Estonia The honour of being “geographical centre of Europe” has long been the subject of intense debate, and a number of places have laid claim to the title over the last few centuries. It was only in 1989 that the Institut Géographique National, the National Geographical Insti- tute of France, finally laid the matter to rest by awarding the coveted title to the tiny village of Purnuškės, slightly north of Vilnius in Lithuania, lying on the coordinates 54° 54′ 0″ N, 25° 19′ 0″ E. Lithuania itself, with a population of 3.4 million, is one of the smallest of the EU Member States, whose total population numbers some 500 million. Lithuania has another claim to fame: not only the centre of Europe but for some years at the very heart of Euro- pean PET production. We visited Orion Global PET UAB (Indorama Ventures), the Retal Group, and UAB Putoksnis. Being round the corner, we went to Estonia and visited Sender- len, a stretch blow moulding company and A le Coq, an Estonian beverage company, to get a view of the beverage market in Estonia. preform production. In 2004 the situation changed abruptly with Lithuania’s admission to the EU. All of a sudden both plants were in the EU. The so-called competitive advantage had gone. Nevertheless, Lithuania was already so well established in the PET business that this had no impact on its production figures. Today the two plants are still operating at full capac- ity and they have, in addition, weathered the storm of the 2010 PET crisis relatively well. Indorama Venture because it was fortunate in having its own PTA capacity and the Neo Group because they reacted to the crisis in a highly flexible by Alexander Büchler Around a quarter of the European requirement of PET material comes from this small country on the Baltic. The local plant of Indorama Ventures, Global orion PET, and the Neo Group (part of the Retal Group) are both based in the port of Klaipeda – cheek by jowl, so-to-speak. When the two plants were being built around the turn of the century, Lithuania was still not part of the EU. In those days, producers set out to supply the booming Eastern markets with material and to circumvent the EU PET import duties that existed at the time by means of downstream Regional market reports Lithuania Part 1