PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2013

imprint EDITORIAL PUBLISHER Alexander Büchler, Managing Director HEAD OFFICE heidelberg business media GmbH Häusserstr. 36 69115 Heidelberg, Germany phone: +49(0)6221-65108-0 fax: +49(0)6221-65108-28 info@hbmedia.net EDITORIAL Doris Fischer: f ischer@hbmedia.net Michael Maruschke Ruari McCallion Waldemar Schmitke Ilona Trotter Wolfgang von Schroeter Anthony Withers MEDIA CONSULTANTS Martina Hischmann hirschmann@hbmedia.net Roland Loch loch@hbmedia.net phone: +49(0)6221-65108-0 fax: +49(0)6221-65108-28 France, Italy, Spain, UK Elisabeth Maria Köpke phone: +49(0)6201-878925 fax: +49(0)6201-878926 koepke@hbmedia.net LAYOUT AND PREPRESS Exprim Kommunikationsdesign Matthias Gaumann | www.exprim.de READER SERVICES Heike Fischer reader@hbmedia.net PRINT Chroma Druck & Verlag GmbH Werkstr. 25 67454 Römerberg Germany WWW www.hbmedia.net | w ww.petpla.net PETplanet insider ISSN 1438-9459 is published 10 times a year. This publication is sent to qualified subscribers (1-year subscription 149 EUR, 2-year subscription 289 EUR, Young professionals’ sub- scription 99 EUR. Magazines will be dispatched to you by airmail). Not to be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Note: The fact that product names may not be identified as trade marks is not an indication that such names are not registered trademarks. 3 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 09/13 www.petpla.net dear readers, Lies, damned lies, and ...? Sometimes it is the simplest questions that fox us the most. Here’s one: “How many preforms are produced worldwide each year?“ The more I have to do with PET – and I’ve been involved with the sector now for more than 15 years – the more I realise that there is no way of reach- ing a reliable conclusion. If we go on from there and ask “How many PET bottles?” or “What is the number of injection moulding machines or filler lines”, we are increasingly tempted to believe that old saw about “lies, damned lies, and …” Nowhere was this dilemma more striking than in reading the reports from our editors following the Editourmobil tour of Latin America. We were analysing the figures for Bolivia produced by two of the most respected market research organisations in the business. Their figures differ by a staggering 100%. And that’s not all: when they consider trends over the past five years, they still cannot agree. For one, growth is at 5%, whilst the other sees 12% in the same year. The following year sees the figures reversed. If these “fully paid up experts” are unable to agree on the figures for a relatively small country, what hope have the rest of us ordinary mortals got in producing valid figures for the entire world? As Churchill is alleged to have said: “The only statistics I can rely on are those I have made up myself…” So what are we to do? Perhaps our best hope is to see if we can discern some nugget of truth from this veritable fog of figures. We can of course always ask the people at the chalkface. During our visit to them, Coca Cola gave their own produc- tion figures for Bolivia which conveniently lay between the two “expert” values. Question is: does the truth always steer a middle course? We have no hesitation this time in leaving this question unanswered, for you, our readers, to build up for yourselves a picture of the size of the market in South America. Truth, and accuracy, can sometimes be a moveable feast. The saying attributed to Churchill above, for example, was loftily dismissed by the London Times with the words: “…we have never heard of this quotation …”. Let us make amends by quoting something that Churchill actually did say, in 1925: “You must look at the facts before they look at you!” Which is exactly what our editors did in their Latin American reports. So, without further ado, let’s go down to the shop floor and check what is happening in the real world. Yours Alexander Büchler