PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2011

REGIONAL MARKET REPORTS 13 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 11/11 www.petpla.net preforms for very special customers. We didn’t have any of these customers on our books” Raimundas explained. And so the HGVs continue to roar off to Germany laden with preforms. Particularly for the western markets and the big Colas, they offer the 1881 preforms for 0.5, 1.5 and 2.0l. “Unfortunately, here in our home market of the Baltics, no-one has yet jumped on to the material saving band- wagon. Maybe we shall soon be seeing the lighter bottle in Finland in spite of the hard tray discussion (see PP Fin- land Report)“ is Raimundas’ comment. The preforms are already there anyway. Retal Baltic Giedrius Viederis (right) and Alexander Büchler taking a look at the new cap production facility at Retal Baltic Making a virtue of necessity is part of the tools of the trade of every businessman. In 2003 the former owners of Retal Baltic built a production facility for preform installa- tions in the Klaipeda Freetrade Zone. Initially, there were two plants in operation there but these were soon moved to Retal Dnipro. Retal then installed a Kuhne PET film plant in the empty 7,000m². production hall. At 6,000t/a it is more of a smaller installation. However, plans for a further plant are already afoot. As a further refinement, there is an aluminising plant available. The remaining Retal works, meanwhile, are full of injection moulding machines, with the result that once again two plants have found their way to Retal Baltic. This time, however, the guys from Klaipeda are concentrating on cap production. The PCO 28 cus- tomary in the region is fabricated using one large and one small Husky plant. The moulds produce the caps in every conceivable colour. A further refinement is the availability of a 3-colour Tampoprint system. “ When it comes to caps the competition is disproportionately high by comparison to preforms. Here we predominantly notice the manufacturers from Poland. Nevertheless, we are very satisfied with the start“ is the verdict of Director Giedrius Viederis. A major part of production is sold to customers of the Retal Europe subsidiary, but nurturing the delicate little cap plantlet has enabled it to succeed in creating its own customer base outside the existing preform contacts. The Retal Industries Subsidiaries Retal CIS, Collected under this heading are preform and cap pro- duction in the former CIS States excluding the EU. Here we visited Retal Dnipro, formerly Uniplast (see PP 4/11)., Retal Russia (see PP6+7/06 ) and Retal Kasatan (see PP 10/08). A newcomer to the list of subsidiaries is Retal Georgia. Retal Europe Retal has gathered together all plants in the EU under this umbrella that produce preforms and caps. There are visited Retal in Vilnus (see above) Retal Germany (see PP 1+2/10) Retal France (see PP 1+2/11) , Retal Iberia (see PP 10/07), Retal Czech Republic and Retal Italy. Retal Baltic PET film production. In March 2011 the company started an additional activity - production of HDPE bottle caps. Neo Group There is only one plant and that is in Klaipeda, here the group produces 300,000t/a of bottle material and will soon be producing around 7,000t/a of Polyol (see above).