PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2013

EDITOUR REPORTS 19 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 05/13 www.petpla.net transition to the PCO 1881 closure. For Retal, new pastures are beckoning in the shape of preform and cap production, and the company is also exploring the market for films. September 4, 2012 Retal We met: Yuriy Khmara Alexandr Grynko Pastures of plenty The summer break is over and our first stop is Retal, one of our spon- sors. The Retal Group with a total of more than 200 SGMs all over Europe is one of the leading manu- facturers of preforms. In Eastern Europe they have, depending on the country, a market share of more than 50%. Here in the Ukraine, in one of the nucleii of the former Uniplast (now the Retal Group) their share is around 70%. This 70 % corresponds to 3.5 bil- lion preforms. 1 billion are made in Kiev, 2.5 billion in Dnipropetrovsk. At the main location there are 22 Husky preform lines and ten Husky closure cap installations. On these, Corvaglia moulds run for the beverages industry. For Russia and the Ukraine Corvaglia and Retal have agreed on exclusivity. “This agreement gives us a good edge. We can focus on offering the single piece PCO 1881 for PC and CC for the western markets in Russia. In the east we can also replace the BPF with the classic PCO 1810!” This is what Yuriy Khmara told us in the course of the inter- view. In the caps market Yuriy still sees potential for growth, whereas the preform market has been stagnating for years. “Here we notice the Euro crisis quite clearly and this is also making itself felt as far away as the Ukraine and Russia“. Per capita consump- tion is stagnating. Even Euro 2012 has not improved matters. Sponsors Carlsberg served the drinks in the stadiums in cardboard beakers and, although consumption of beverages boosted the statistics, there was no benefit for PET. “If the ban on beer in PET comes into force, it would have a big effect on us because we would not be able to make up for the beer preform through growth in other beverages segments“. But Yuriy smiles mischievously and goes on “then we will have to think about doing something“.