PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2013

imprint EDITORIAL PUBLISHER Alexander Büchler, Managing Director HEAD OFFICE heidelberg business media GmbH Häusserstr. 36 69115 Heidelberg, Germany phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 info@hbmedia.net EDITORIAL Doris Fischer: fischer@hbmedia.net Michael Maruschke Ruari McCallion Waldemar Schmitke Ilona Trotter Wolfgang von Schroeter Anthony Withers MEDIA CONSULTANTS Martina Hirschmann hirschmann@hbmedia.net Roland Loch loch@hbmedia.net phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 France, Italy, Spain, UK Elisabeth Maria Köpke phone: +49 6201-878925 fax: +49 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. 12/13 www.petpla.net dear readers, PET at €10,000/t The headline brings back memories of the oil crises of 1973, 1979 and 1990 when the oil price rocketed. Today we can look back at those prices and permit ourselves a smile. Since then, we have had to get used to a considerably higher oil price and the world is still turning. Will PET prices ever experience such a shock to the system? It seems a ridiculous question at first sight. The thought was prompted by a visitor to our exhibition stand at drinktec/PETpoint. Aluminium, for example, has a price, say, €20,000/t. Let’s take the example of Germany, with a net aver- age German income in 2013 of around €1,500/month. What would happen if PET prices went through the roof, as oil did? Impossible, do I hear you say? People would still be drinking water from the tap, and non-returnable bottles of beer would be so expensive no-one would be able to afford them. Nothing of the sort is going to happen, because it’s already happening. In Germany the consumer is paying €10,000/t of PET and €20,000/t of alu- minium. How so, you may ask? The reason is the return deposit system in Ger- many. The consumer pays €0.25 per bottle or can. Assuming a weight of 25g per bottle, that amounts to 40,000 bottles for every tonne. Multiply that figure by €0.25 and we arrive at the mind-boggling amount of €10,000/t. Aluminium cans being half the weight means that a tonne will cost €20,000. Compulsory deposits have been the norm in Germany since 2003 i.e. for more than 10 years now. Despite all the gloomy predictions, it has not been the signal for the PET bottle to disappear down the drain. On the contrary, it has succeeded in gaining market share compared to glass and cans. Why have I waited ten years before mentioning this? Because people have a tendency to adopt a blinkered approach when it comes to develop- ments within their sector. We Germans have come to accept the return deposit and do not think any more about it. This brings me back to our Bolivian visitor at drinktec, Ivo Kuljies, Proprietor of Empacar Santa Cruz. When he asked how much a tonne of deposit bottles would cost, I thought I had misheard. I started to explain to him the difference between no-deposit packaging and the sort that attracted a deposit of €0.25/unit… “No“ he inter- rupted, “what does a tonne cost?“ It was only then that I started to do my sums. It comes out at around € 10,000/t. Sometimes you need a stimulus from the outside to make you see better on the inside. I wish you many such stimuli in this issue. Yours Alexander Büchler