PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2014

EDITOUR REPORT 16 PET planet insider Vol. 15 No. 05/14 www.petpla.net There are also two further 32-cavity injection moulding machines on order for this application. The market for UHT milk packaging is also on the move. Bottling using PET bottles is increasing. Here too the company offers 1-piece HDPE closures featuring the DoubleSeal technology developed years ago, which does not call for an additional aluminium seal for the bottle and which is suitable for aseptic bottling. Danone has gone over to PET for packaging Activia yogurt and uses closure caps from Bericap featuring the DoubleSeal technology. When it comes to bottling milk in PET bottles, the pio- neer was Leitíssimo, a company with roots in New Zea- land, which bottles Premium milk. The cows do have New Zealand genes and feed exclusively on fresh grass. The product is unique in Brazil. Unsurprisingly, the milk is at the top end of the price range, but demand is constantly rising. It did not come as a surprise, therefore, that a premium milk, packed in a premium bottle, required a premium clo- sure to “top it off”. Let’s leave the final word to Aurel Forgaci: “Since our early days, 15 years ago now, when we started doing busi- ness in Brazil, we did bet on HDPE 1-piece closures for the beverage industry. Time and patience proved us right. 1-piece closures are a reality and here to stay. They are more precise and thus perform better than their 2-piece counterparts. On top of that, they are more economical. They are just the best choice for bottlers. As simple as that.” May 16 and May 24, 2013 Ambev We met: Ricardo Rolim, Director of Institutional Relations, Sus- tainability and Communication Thiago Guedes Hackradt, Marketing Ricardo Rolim in front of Ambev’s historic picture gallery Bottle-to-bottle We encounter Ambev twice on our South America tour. On the first occasion we meet Thiago Guedes Hackradt from Marketing and the second time round it is Ricardo Rolim, Director of Institutional Relations, Sustainability and Communication who welcomes us. Here in Brazil, Ambev is made up of two divisions, the beer brewery and the CSD, non-alcoholic and non-carbo- nated sections. The Brazilian drinks market is dominated by CSD, fol- lowed by bottled water, isotonics and ready to drink teas. The flavours in the CSD market are, in order of popular- ity, Coca, Guarana, Orange and Lime. The majority of soft drinks are sold in supermarkets in the form of 2l non-return- able PET bottles for home consumption. Ambev‘s main CSD brands are Guarana Antarctica and Pepsi. In addition, there are other beverages such as Gatorade, H2OH and Lipton, all of which are marketed under licence from Pepsi Co. The mineral water market is serviced as part of a cooperation agreement with Nestlé. Our meeting with Ricardo Rolim begins with the compa- ny’s dream to be the Best Beer Company in a Better World. In line with the slogan we duly began at the beginning, taking a look at the training and education programmes for employees as part of their daily operations. Ricardo Rolim explains: “At an in-plant level we are focusing on waste recycling (up to 99%) and measures to reduce energy con- sumption and carbon emissions, making use of up to date technologies”. When we get on to the subject of recycled PET in Brazil, Ricardo Rolim claims: “One of our company’s most important external projects is the reprocessing of recycled PET into drinks bottles. The technology, which focuses on producing raw material from used PET that is suitable for re-use in drink bottles, is available on the Brazilian market. But the problem lies in the collection rates. A prime example here is cans. Here collection rates of 90% are achieved, with PET only just exceeding the 50% mark and even here there are pronounced regional differences”. Ricardo Rolim filled in the background: “One problem is the lack of support to cooperatives. Only 14% of municipali- ties in Brazil have PET recycling systems at their disposal. The used PET bottles end up predominantly in the house- hold waste and it is from here that they are collected by the refuse pickers on the waste disposal sites”. He went on: “The general public don´t really know the high value of used PET bottles as a potential raw mate- rial. Education is the key. Separation of household waste at source would have the effect of significantly increasing collection rates”. To promote awareness of environmental issues amongst the general public, Ambev performs various actions such as active efforts at education and projects that benefit consumers, cooperatives, society and environment. One example is the project Ambev Recicla that contributes to the development of model cooperatives in several states