PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2011

REGIONAL MARKET REPORTS 11 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 11/11 www.petpla.net a range of naturally carbonated spring waters the ”Volu- vesi“ brand from Wisewater is one that stands out (www. wisewater.ee) in terms of its design. The squared off corner design and the 1.25l volume large bottle are especially eye-catching. Senderlen’s existing capacity leaves plenty of scope for further orders and Gustav Poola is looking at being able to supply additional bottles for bottling plants in the high season. He has set his sights on the Nordic countries as his export markets. “The standard of living here is higher which also means that customers are willing to pay higher prices for their bottles“ is Gustav’s credo. Once the competitors of Farmi or the carrot juice manu- facturer notice that their sales will increase more quickly than those of their competitors as a result of changing from cartons to PET bottles, they too will be queuing up on Gus- tav’s doorstep. www.senderlen.ee Square for water, round for mayo(nnaise) and white for milk – all the PET containers come from Senderlen. Retal Industries Pellets, preforms, caps Precisely three of Retal’s plants lie in Lithu- ania: one for PET production, one for preform production and one for PET films. Although all three production workshops belong to different Retal subsidiaries, they nevertheless work closely together. The following is an overview of the dif- ferent Retal branches and more detailed reports on the three sites in Lithuania. What initially looked like a glorious hotch-potch of dif- ferent preform manufacturers in Europe purchased by Uniplast has developed into a powerful preform group. With the backward integration of the supply of raw materi- als, the group remained in a position to deliver even during the years of crisis. Turnover in 2010 was of the order of €1.2million. Production has now reached 15 billion pre- forms per year and 300,000t of PET material for preforms. Around 30% of material production goes into producing their own preforms, the rest is sold outside the group. Retal Industries have split up what now amounts to 14 production locations into four subsidiaries, Retal Europe, Retal CIS, Retal Baltic and NEO Group (see box). Giedrius Viederis shows off the two extruders in the film line. Recycling Of interest to our readers will be the loop that has been constructed for production waste in Klaipeda. This can be used for the subsequent building of a fully-fledged recycling facility which can also be employed for postcon- sumer waste. The central element is the production of PET film in Retal Baltic. The demands made on PET for PET ther- moforming sheets are not as high as they are for bottle material. As a result, the majority of production residues enter the films in the form of an intermediate layer. Cur- rently these include the crushed film residue from their own production, punching scrap from film customers, crushed preforms from preform production and low quality PET granulate from their own PET manufacturing activities. The extruders for the film production are capable of processing up to 60% flakes without the output of 1,200kg/h giving way under the strain. If a sufficient number of PET postconsumers could be identified in the region, the company would be ready to invest in corresponding treatment plants here. Alexandr Grynko, new business development chief, is talking of a requirement of 15,000t before 10,000t of recyclable flakes can be achieved. In Lithuania , out of an approximate 16,000t of bottles, only 3,000t have been collected up. Too few to set the ball rolling. The intermediate layer is covered top and bottom with new material. “Our current capacity of 6000t/a is already exhausted“ says Director Griedrius Vied- eris. They are thinking about a second plant with a capacity of 10,000t for the medium term. But even that does not mean an end to recycling. The production waste and the PET residue (which is expensive to shred) is now being processed into Polyol, a component for PUR manufacture, by Neogroup. For this they are look- ing at 7,000t/a. So, to conclude, it is only new PET mate- rial, preforms, caps and PET films that pass through the plant gates at Retal.