PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2012

imprint EDITORIAL PUBLISHER Alexander Büchler, Managing Director HEAD OFFICE heidelberg business media GmbH Häusserstr. 36 69115 Heidelberg, Germany phone: +49(0)6221-65108-0 fax: +49(0)6221-65108-28 info@hbmedia.net EDITORIAL Doris Fischer: f ischer@hbmedia.net Michael Maruschke Ruari McCallion Ilona Trotter Wolfgang von Schroeter Anthony Withers MEDIA CONSULTANTS Ute Andrä andrae@hbmedia.net Martina Hischmann hirschmann@hbmedia.net Roland Loch loch@hbmedia.net phone: +49(0)6221-65108-0 fax: +49(0)6221-65108-28 France, Italy, Spain, UK Elisabeth Maria Köpke phone: +49(0)6201-878925 fax: +49(0)6201-878926 koepke@hbmedia.net LAYOUT AND PREPRESS Exprim Kommunikationsdesign Matthias Gaumann | www.exprim.de READER SERVICES Shiraz El Goudi reader@hbmedia.net PRINT Chroma Druck & Verlag GmbH Werkstr. 25 67454 Römerberg Germany WWW www.hbmedia.net | w ww.petpla.net PETplanet insider ISSN 1438-9459 is published 10 times a year. This publication is sent to qualified subscribers (1-year subscription 149 EUR, 2-year subscription 289 EUR, Young professionals’ sub- scription 99 EUR. Magazines will be dispatched to you by airmail). Not to be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Note: The fact that product names may not be identified as trade marks is not an indication that such names are not registered trademarks. 3 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 12/12 www.petpla.net EDITORIAL dear readers, At the beginning of November, Vadim Zhivulin of the Russian Impact Assessment Ministry issued a statement which caused the Russian PET industry to breathe a vast sigh of relief. He confirmed that the previously announced plan to impose a ban on the use of PET bottles in beer production has been aban- doned. “Rosalkogolregulirovaniya“, the Russian Alcohol Regula- tory Authority, concluded that, following extensive investigations and a thorough analysis of international research, no harmful substances are emitted by PET. What this means for PET pro- ducers and breweries is that, at long last, the No-Beer-in-PET argument has been permanently kicked into the long grass. This encouraging news reached us shortly before we went to press, which means that we were unable to explore the full implications of these new developments in our feature on Russia. At the time of our visits to the Russian breweries the sit- uation was still very much on the table. The law had every pros- pect of coming into effect. The consequences of this proposed ban have long been evident to the Russian brewing industry as a whole: a complete lack of any investment in PET. Now that the threat has been lifted, it is not difficult to imag- ine the surge in investment that is likely to follow, galvanising the Russian market and finally rousing it from its torpor of the past few years. Normally a magazine is always too late to include Stop Press items, reporting the news only after the event. On this occasion, we were probably too early, as we were in Russia BEFORE the decision was made on the PET ban (see pp. 10). So, by the next issue of PETplanet Insider, we will have made it our business to talk with some of the breweries and suppli- ers in Russia, asking them in particular which of their plans will now be activated and which will be history, in the wake of this announcement. Yours Alexander Büchler