PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2012

EDITOUR REPORTS 8 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 12/12 www.petpla.net Trends in PET, the beer ban controversy, and frustrations over recycling and formats. The advantages of PET packaging for beer have long been well-known to consumers, particularly the 1.5l and 2l bottles which are highly popular. In contrast to bottles and cans, beer in PET boasts a total market share of just under 50%. Another striking feature of the market is the extensive use of PET for milk and milk products, as even a cursory review of the chilled section of any supermarket will tes- tify. Part of the popularity of PET in this sector is down to the fact that in the past, fresh milk was only available in polyolefin sleeve packaging. Once the PET revolution had taken hold, it was a simple task to persuade consumers that milk in a PET bottle represented a more economic and user-friendly option than the aseptic carton. This led to a steady rise in milk consumption which in turn prompted the dairies to increase their production. What immediately springs to mind when the subject of Russia comes up? The Kremlin, Bolshoi ballet, oligarchs, music, Siberian winters, Red Square, the Cold War, the list is endless. One fact stands out: Russia is a vast coun- try. The largest country on earth, it covers more than one eighth of the globe, extends over 17 million km², shares maritime borders with five seas, spans nine time zones and has some of the world’s largest reserves of mineral Russia During the course of our travels in the world of Russian beverages we enjoyed a multitude of interesting experiences and encounters. We looked in detail at every stage of PET bottle manufacture, up to and including bottling opera- tions, but we also engaged in “open forum” exchanges with some of the leading players in the market. We start with a brief review. In the Soviet era, glass, cans and (a small quantity of) cartons dominated the market. The breakthrough for PET came only at the end of the 1990s. Although less than meteoric, the last few years have nonetheless demonstrated a continuous rise in the use of PET packaging, with clear growth peaks evident at the beginning through to the middle of the last decade. These growth peaks however proved to be a temporary phenomenon, due to changes in consumer behaviour, meaning that growth has levelled off and stabilised at 4-5% /a. Beer and milk represent the most important markets for PET, with contributions from the bottling of CSDs and water. In the beer sector what is instantly remarkable is the great diversity of PET bottles in a very wide range of sizes by Kay Krüger Nuremberg Nizhny Novgorod Kazan Perm Yekaterinburg Chelyabinsk Yaroslavskaya Moscow Ufa Samara Saratov Volgograd Rostov-on-Don Dnipropetrovsk Kiev Warsaw Novgorod Saint Petersburg Gatchina Fryazino Kamenka Lipetsk Zaporishsha Mykolaiv Kharkiv Chernihiv Kalinovka Lübeck