PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2013

EDITOUR REPORTS 16 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 05/13 www.petpla.net springs. That for its premium brand, “Drop of Living Water”, is extracted from the deepest spring, about 60m down. We were invited to a “water testing” to sample the different tastes of the bottled mineral waters. We discovered that there were remarkable differences between the different waters, which all come from the same underground springs but from differ- ent depths. As well as still and carbonated mineral water, the company also produces so-called “Enhanced Waters”, which are made up of to 10% other ingredients, such as natural flavourings, probiotics and selenium (Se). The consumer can easily recognize these enhanced water as the bottles, caps and labels are more colourful than the standard range. The company purchases preforms from external sup- pliers and processes them on the its three blow-moulding machines: a SIG Blomax 6 (about 10,800bph); one Sipa machine for the 0.5l bottles (about 7,000bph); and a second Sipa for 5l bottles (1,000bph). The bottles are filled on a Russia/Ukraine July 30, 2012 Aqua Don We met: Sergey Zaichenko, General Direktor Oleg Bondarenko, Production Manager Marina Dementjewa, Head of Quality Control Water is life – but it must be high quality On October 1, 1996, the first 1.5l PET bottle left the production line of the newly-formed Aqua Don company. This was the start of its journey to become the leading bot- tled water supplier in the region, with a total annual output of 100 million litres in 15 million bottles. Bottle sizes today include 0.2, 0.33, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 5.0 and 19l, the 1.5l bottle remains the most popular size. Aqua Don employs about 320 people and its water comes from three different underground by Alexander Büchler Michael Maruschke Waldemar Schmitke Part 5 After many weeks full of interesting impressions and interviews, in this issue we now take our leave of Russia and head for Ukraine. We would like to thank all our interview partners for their construc- tive support which has helped us better understand the PET market in this vast country and enabled us to obtain a perspective of where our journey may take us. Our last two interviews were con- ducted in Rostov-na-Donu. Here we interviewed the water bottler Aqua Don, and finally the Baltika brewery, before moving on to the Ukraine, where Team 3, consisting of Alexander Büchler and Wal- demar Schmitke took over the reins of the Editourmobil. The excitement continues. 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