PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2015

EDITOUR REPORT 13 PET planet insider Vol. 16 PET Markets Filippo Angiolini then went on to give us his view of the current market situation. “Our most important PET markets are: Russia was our starter market for PET Colours and is still, despite the volatile political situation, a consider- able source of revenue with its own branch office. All other European states are supplied and supported from Italy. The Italian market is characterised by dwindling purchas- ing power and the associated effort to reduce costs. On the one hand, the customer is anxious to use colour in order to stand out from the crowd and this encourages more colours to be employed, but at the same time, he wants to reduce the costs of col- ours for his product. This also applies to additives, e.g. for milk packaging in PET, where a 90-day shelf life is required (UHT milk). The USA is one of our growth markets and justifies the investment in own brand presence and production. The loca- tion has been chosen to provide potential for 4-fold expansion. This market is defined by mass- produced items with less colour diversity. There is less demand for additives because, in PET, there is still a large number of co- injection barrier applica- tions. In the Far East, we are represented by local part- ners (including technical service). We have decided not to invest in China because the risks are too high at for a medium- sized, family-run company. However, of interest to us are the Japanese and South Korean markets, which are very highly sophisticated in terms of technology and akin to our own set-up. In Africa, we are already present in few countries in South Africa as well as, Saharan and Sub-Saharan areas. Business in this area will probably grow for us in the coming years in terms of volumes and applications.” Summing up, Filippo Angiolini emphasised that “we have a product that can be shipped at reasonable costs and, because of this, we do not have to build production locations everywhere in the world.” Products The products are split into four categories for PET processing: Liquid Colours  For PET application in injection moulding of PET pre- forms