PETpla.net Insider 04/ 2013

EDITOURS REPORTS 16 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 04/13 www.petpla.net July 24, 2012 Kamenka Brewery We met: Alex I Golovachev, Ilya Golovachev, Development Manager and the whole Kamenka family Alex I Golovachev and his team Time stands still in Kamenka brewery The Kamenka brewery was established in 1968, with the help of Czech Engineering. When it was scheduled for closure 40 years later, due to unprofitability and misman- agement, former Soviet Army pilot Mr. Golovachev took it over in 2008. Prior to the acquisition, Mr. Alex I Golovachev has been the distributor of various beer brands, including Kamenka and Baltika. The whole upper management was changed and replaced by people from different regions. At that time the Kamenka beer was solely distributed in kegs; Mr. Golovachev came up with the idea of bottling it in dis- tinctive barrel-shaped 1.5l PET bottles, weighing 32g and incorporating a handle, which made them easy to carry and easy to store in the refrigerator. One litre (32g) and 3l (51g) followed. When the season changes from UV-intensive summer to winter, the bottles follow suit and change their colours from brown to clear, while retaining their guaran- teed shelf-life of 30 days. Preforms and caps are purchased locally from the region. Blowing of PET preforms to bottles is partly manual;. they are placed onto a conveyor chain by hand, before being heated during a circuit of the oven. The pre- forms are then removed from the conveyor chain, again by hand, and placed in a blowing device consisting mainly of mould and compressed air. The company is able to produce up to 180,000 bottles per month by this process. While PET processing and filling is not a bottleneck in the plant. Mr. Golovachev wants to increase overall capacity; not least because, in summer, demand is three times the plan’s actual production capacity. Kamenka has a population of about 25,000 people and, today 119 of them are employed at Kamenka Brew- ery, which makes it one of the biggest employers in the city. With the exception of a change in malt supplier from a local source to a more stable malt from Belarus, the entire brewing process and equipment dates back to the plant’s foundation, in 1968; the factory remains coal-powered. Mr. Golovachev is proud to be one of the few regional brew- ers who do not use any pasteurisation, preservatives or chemicals (mostly forbidden in Western Europe) as many larger breweries do in order to increase the shelf life of the PET beer bottles to 6-12 months. “Even if we wanted to, we could not use pasteurisation or chemicals as our equip- ment is too old”, Mr. Golovachev states with a smile. The fact that the beer is 100% natural but still affordable are the main sales points. When he emphasised this by put- ting an additional “100% natural” label on the bottle, sales increased immediately by another 14%. According to Mr. Golovachev beer in Russia is packed to about 73% in PET, 16% glass, 7% kegs and 4% cans. From 1996 to 2001 the beer market was solely in the hand of multinational companies. And even today, about 98% of the produced beer is sold by global businesses like Heineken or Carlsberg, which also owns the Baltika brand. The average beer consumption in Russia is about 42l per person/per year. Manual preform converting: Heating and blowing go hand in hand at Kemenka July, 26, 2012 Rosinka We met: Vladimir Trofimov, Board of Directors Vladimir Trofimov at his office