PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2014

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 18 PET planet insider Vol. 15 No. 10/14 www.petpla.net Alpla on growth strategies and the role of recycled PET R-PET for own use by Waldemar Schmitke To kick off our Go to Brau Beviale Editourmobil Tour 2014, we pay a visit to the plastics packaging specialist Alpla in Austria. The company, founded by Messrs Alwin and Helmut Lehner in 1955, is still in private ownership today and run by members of the family. Today the company, which has its main office in the Austrian town of Hard, employs more than 15,000 people worldwide and has a turnover of more than 3 billion euros spread over 150 production workshops in 40 countries. And the indications are that the trend is rising. The company’s external profile is surprisingly low within the sector for an enterprise of this magnitude and, as far as end users are concerned, remains something of an unknown; the family places a great deal of emphasis on maintaining its privacy. At the company head office, I meet Hermann Riedlsperger, Head of Corporate Sales PET. Alpla is split up into three divisions which, in terms of turnover, can be broken down as follows:  10% manufacture of closures and caps  45% PET preforms and stretch blow moulding  45% extrusion blow moulding PET applications The largest PET markets for Alpla are Western and Eastern Europe together with Central and South America. However, the biggest growth in the beverages sector today is to be found in South America, Asia and India. In China and the USA, business is concentrated exclusively on the non-beverages sector. The production range is divided up as follows: ¾ for beverages applica- tions and ¼ for household applica- tions, food and other packaged goods. At the same time, where the non-bev- erage packs are concerned, growth is kept within limits, due to the large number of different specific require- ments in relation to packaging. In the beverages sector, growth is a hot topic, although this is limited depend- ing on the specific country. In the majority of markets, preform systems incorporating 72 and 96 cavities are used. However, in large markets such as Mexico or Brazil, it goes without saying that systems with up to 144 cavities will also feature in production. According to Riedlsperger, in the European market however there is more call for flexibility than for higher numbers of cavities. 50% of the companies already work on the basis of the wall-to-wall concept, and the trend is rising. This involves setting up PET bottle manu- facturing facilities in an adjacent room or a neighbouring building within a bottling plant. This consequently en- ables the PET bottles to be delivered directly to the bottler’s filling machine via conveyor lines through a “hole in the wall”. This means that no trans- port or storage costs are incurred for the PET bottles. Hence the PET bottle manufacturing operation lies within the responsibility of the bottle supplier. UHT milk in PET bottles repre- sents a smaller area of beverages packaging and is a feature mainly in Poland and Italy. The technology used here involves the processing of a high-concentration light barrier in the preform machine using the mono process. Recycling Within the Group a high priority is set on the processing of recycled PET. One aspect is the processing of food-safe recycled PET in flake form in proportions of up to 50% in the pre- form machine. Another feature is up to 100% processing of food-safe PET in the form of pellets from the com- pany’s own recycling lines in order to produce preforms and bottles. In addition, Alpla has established its own recycling plants in Poland and Austria, with a capacity of 50,000t/a. These plants supply mainly bottle- to-bottle quality for their own use. In addition, as Hermann Riedlsperger Hermann Riedlsperger, Head of Corporate Sales PET, Alpla