PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2013

EDITOUR REPORTS 12 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 03/13 www.petpla.net ness and sustainability is a topic that has been seemingly relegated to the back burner, and although both producers and consumers pay lip service to the idea, little is being done to encourage recycling. It is an important topic so we were keen to establish the viewpoint of the major machine manufacturers at our meetings here. One of the key players in the market is the Europlast Group, whose subsidiary Plarus is one of the few companies in the forefront of PET recycling in Russia. On this continuing stage of our tour of the region, we also spoke to the plastics all-rounder Protey, and the capper Safe Cap. Machine manufacturers were represented by Husky and Netstal. One thing is certain: in and around Moscow we suspect that we could have spent half a life- time making sure we met all the interesting PET proces- sors, bottlers and cappers and enjoying hearing what they had to say about this impressive trend. But the tour had to go on ... Russia Moscow has us firmly in its grip. Even a cursory glance reveals the astonishing array of PET applications, and here, in Russia’s capital city, we are going to meet some of the creative leading lights behind this plethora of bottles and designs for closures. It is a great success story, charting the triumphal march begun by the industry a very long time ago. Glass is still around of course. You see it most fre- quently in the spirits sector although there are still beers available in the traditional glass bottle. Look further how- ever, and you will see, in all the retail outlets, shelf after shelf of CSDs, juices, beer and milk products in PET. The irony is that, whilst PET packaging is widely liked and accepted by the Russian consumer, environmental aware- by Kay Krüger Part 3 A wealth of PET applications, a dearth of sustainability projects Moscow and its environs 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