PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2013

EDITOUR REPORTS 14 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 09/13 www.petpla.net Bolivia and Peru are the countries where our South America report starts. Two countries that could hardly be more different but which are nevertheless linked by a number of factors. Peru with its location on the Pacific coast skirting the Andes where the mountain pass roads rise to a height of 5,000m above sea level. But it is pre- cisely the Andes that link both countries. Bolivia’s access to the sea is via the mountain range, the seat of the gov- ernment of Bolivia at La Paz lies in the Andes at a height of 4,000m above sea level, the main city of Sucre at 3,000m above sea level. Prosperity thrives in Santa Cruz in the tropical part of Bolivia. The 10.5 million inhabitants are spread around the country in and around these three centres. The roads between these centres are long, dusty and not infrequently bumpy. The country has only around 9 million telephone connections and only one in every ten inhabitants uses the internet. Things are quite different in Peru. Here everything is concentrated on the main city, almost a third of all 30 mil- lion Peruvians live in the Greater Lima area. The other locations on the coast and in the Andes can be reached quickly via well-constructed roads. The telecommunica- tions network has been extensively developed: there are more telephone connections than inhabitants and every 3rd inhabitant is an internet user. In Peru, the GDP per head is, at 10,900US$, double that in Bolivia. An expanse of coastline, the Andes rising to a height of 7,000m above sea level and tropical zones – all these we have crossed for the Peru and Bolivia Editour Report. However diverse the regions may be, everyone drinks something like 50l of CSD per year. We identified even more factors in common, but also a number of differences. And moving now to the factors in common: Both coun- tries exhibit restrained population growth of just over 1% per year; between 85 and 88% of the population in both countries have access to clean drinking water. Depend- ing on the basis for the data, in both nations each inhabit- ant drinks around 50l of CSD and approx. 10l of packaged water per person. Exact figures are not actually available because the two market research companies, Canadean and Euromonitor, present very different statistics. The data from Coca Cola lies somewhere between the two values. In Bolivia the pent-up demand was probably greater than in Peru; here growth in the beverages industry has been of the order of some 10%/a whilst Peru is registering growth of around 5-7%/a. Also similar is the PET recycling sector. In both coun- tries there were unregulated street collections with all the associated negative phenomena such as child labour and exploitation. The situation has undergone a distinct improvement here in the last few years, contingent on the processing of the bottles collected in each of the countries from large industrial processing operations - SMI in Peru and Empacar in Bolivia – the companies have managed to bring about the gradual legalisation of the collecting sector. A consistent rise in the rate of returns is their reward for their trouble. The quality of separation is so good that, in Peru, every sixth kilogram of PET is already being used Lima Santiago La Paz Buenos Aires Montevideo Progresso São José dos Pinhais São Paulo Rio de Janeiro Lindóia Santa Cruz Sucre Quilmes Pilar Jaú Concepción Santa Fe Barueri Jundiai Sorocaba Amparoa Limeira Peru, Bolivia by Alexander Büchler