PETpla.net Insider 04/ 2013

EDITOURS REPORTS 14 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 04/13 www.petpla.net real boom in Russia. At that time most of the closures were being imported from the Ukraine. The amount produced by Bericap today is considerable: around 4billion closures per year, exactly double the output of 2008. Litskevitch is coy about revealing details on the machines in use, but he does let slip that there are currently 40 of them and ”the majority of systems are from Netstal“. All available space in the pro- duction hall is used in the most efficient way possible. The company premises cover 35,000m ² and it currently employs 160 people. With such impressive capacity, it is hardly surprising that product is now being delivered beyond the borders of Russia as far as Belarus and the Ukraine. The list of customers is long and features many of the major players. At present there are 25 different types of closure produced in neck sizes 28 to 55mm. Litskevitch reports that Bericap was the very first company in Russia to start producing the PCO 1881 – on demand from Coca-Cola und Pepsi. Three to four months later competitors followed suit. Subsequently the first Coca- Cola and Pepsi bottles with the new, more lightweight clo- sure, could be found lining the shelves in in 2011, followed in 2012 by any amount of B-Brands. Today the PCO 1881 is Bericap‘s best seller. Nevertheless, concedes Litskevitch, the manufacturers tend to be somewhat conservative here generally speaking. As long as the technology keeps going, nothing would change in a number of places, which is also the reason why a large number of BPF and PCO 1810 closures were circulating in the market. “The specific use of PCO 1810 will presumably continue for the next three to four years before the equipment is changed here too. Many com- panies do not have the necessary liquidity at their disposal to change from the material-saving neck finish, opting to modify the preform in some way as a cost-saving measure.“ What does the future hold? As Litskevitch sees it, the trend from oversize PET bottles to small, single-serve bottles on the beer market is discernible, especially in the major centres of population where higher earners are likely to reside. www.bericap.com By Kay Krüger July 21, 2012 Bering We met: Ildar Gafiyatullin, General Director Raoul Khasano Raoul Khasano (right) of Bering with Michael Maruschke Russia Tour Blog – around Moscow Friendly stewardesses, continually drip- ping teapots, passenger queues for the toilets, and no beer being served. The Transaero flight from Bangkok is head- ing to Moscow, fully booked and crowded with tired tourists. While most passengers will end their long journey in the Rus- sian capital, for me it is only a tran- sit point en route to Yekaterinburg, to explore the world of PET beyond the Ural Mountains. After taking over the Editour- mobil from Kay, I continue the Go to Brau Beviale Tour as the second team. The first stop after Yekaterinburg is Ufa. We are welcomed to the premises of a former Rus- sian scientific research company by Ildar Gafiyatullin, the General Director and per- fectionist of Bering, and learn more about the PET bottles used for cosmetic prod- ucts and the popular Lalinka beauty brand. After a friendly discussion and a fac- tory tour we carry on to Kamenka brewery. There, we are brought to the company-owned pond in the middle of nowhere and experi- ence “virgin nature” and Russian hospi- tality. We and the Kamenka guys pass the time fishing, cooking, having long conver- sations about PET. Long after midnight we go to sleep, and wake up the next morning to witness Kamenka’s time-honored brewing processes, including coal-fired heating and hand-filled bottles. A few days later we arrive at Lipetsk, a centre of heavy industry and a city of half a million people, for an appoint- ment with Vladimir Trofimov of Rosinka. Air quality issues stemming from the city’s steel plants are one reason for them to put a special focus on cleanliness in production, which they achieve by a high degree of automation: Even the final stack- ing and wrapping of the PET bottle packs, the completion of the packing of the bot- tled water and juices, is done by robots. At very short notice we visit Lipetsk Pivo, right next to Rosinka. They produce a unique 30l beer “keg” – of course, made of PET. We need three days to get from Lipetsk to Rostov, the green city on the Don, and our final destination. We head to Aqua Don, the regional market leader in mineral water, where we learn more about bottled water in Russia, visit the pro- duction lines and have an extensive dis- cussion with director Sergey Zaichenko. Finally, we have a meeting with the Rus- sian beer giant Baltika, now part of the Carlsberg Group. This is one of the most modern European breweries, and we learn about Baltika’s preparations for the anticipated sales ban of beer in PET. We select a beautiful white downtown river beach for the night, but it soon turns out that it’s occupied by a hip party crowd. In our search for a more peaceful place for rest we drive out of town altogether.