PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2012

EDITOURS REPORTS 20 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 06/12 www.petpla.net Grom LLC Yerevan Care and household products with PET from the House of Grom We met: Mr Hovhannes Azaryan, General Director Hovhannes Azaryan (left) and KAy Krüger (right) The family firm of Grom LLC started life in 2001 and right up to the present day, has been managed by Mr Hovhannes Azaryan and his brother with a workforce of around 40 employees on the edge of the city of Yerevan. This small com- pany, which is currently expanding and moving from its origi- nal site of around 3,000m 2 to occupy premises with an area of 18,000m 2 in a different part of Yerevan, produces PET bottles and jars in the household and beauty care sector, along with their contents such as soap and shampoos, most of which are packaged in bottles of their own manufacture. A further branch activity of the business consists in buying in bottles from outside which are filled with their own filler products. Due to the political situation and for reasons of infra- structure, Grom has made up its mind over the course of the years to manufacture its products itself and to halt the import of products from Russia. Accordingly, Grom was working with a Chinese blow moulding machine; however, the results achieved with it did not come up to expectations and it was not long before they had to opt for two ASB machines, one for each location. Grom, as Mr Azaryan showed me, currently has the facilities to blow mould around 12 different bottles. The various closures are bought in from Turkey but, in the future, the inten- tion is to also manufacture these on site. As Grom is currently only active on the Armenian market, Mr Azaryan is toying with the idea of exporting his products to Georgia too. Mr Azaryan is likewise interested in the production of PET bottles for mineral water, because – in his words – the Armenian market is experi- encing constant growth in the still water sector. CJSC Hytex Plastic Pioneers on the preform front We met: Mr Levon Meliksetyan, Chairman Mr Samvel Tumanyan, General Director In Yerevan I visited Mr Samvel Tumanyan, General Director and Mr Levon Meliksetyan, Chairman of preeform manufacturers Hytex Plastic, both of whom have been readers of PETplanet since 2004. Hytex Plastic, specialists in the manufacture of preforms, run a production opera- tion at two plants: since 1997 at the Armenian location and, since 2007, at a second site in Georgia. Hytex is the first company to introduce PET on to the Armenian market as a material for bottles. Each year a total of approximately 140 million preforms are created in seven different formats using two Husky HyPET machines which have been in operation since 2004. In front of a Husky HyPET 120at HyPET: Levon Meliksetyan, Kay Krüger and Samvel Tumanyan (from left to right) The final decision in favour of the Husky machines was made on the occasion of the K-Fair in 2004. It was here that the contracts for the purchase of the HyPETs were concluded, the machines which were subsequently destined to assume the place formerly occupied by a Korean machine and a second hand Krupp and Demag- Mannesmann machine that had been acquired at a later date. In addition to the two HyPETs in Yerevan, Hytex Plastic have a further HyPET at the Georgia plant. Here a second additional HyPET is currently in the procurement phase. In 2005 the company in Yerevan, having met all the necessary pre-conditions, concluded the supplier contracts with Coca-Cola Armenia. At present Hytex Plastic supply Coca-Cola with more than 50% of the preforms produced, whilst the remainder is spread across other processors in Armenia and Georgia. Ararat Under construction* We met: Nadezhda Gulaga, Marketing Manager Musheg Mkhitaryan, President Sergey Hovhannisyan, Project Manager Mineral water under the brand name Ararat was bottled in Armenia from 1964 till 1988, and the majority of it was exported. Following the collapse of Soviet Union and the subsequent war the bottling plant was destroyed. The rarat Group was created in 2007 with the task of building the new factory for bottling Ararat mineral water.A brand-new facility was built from scratch on a green field site. . It has