PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2017

EDITOUR PET planet Insider Vol. 18 No. 09/17 www.petpla.net 23 Gathering at Alpla’s entrance area with (f.r.t.l.) Thomas Ahrer (Alpla), Kay Barton (PETplanet), Jorge Martinez Hernandez (Coca-Cola Femsa), Romano Reyes (Husky), John Willauer (Alpla), Mervin Tuquib (Coca-Cola Femsa) The shared history and partner- ship between Alpla and Femsa dates back to the 1990s. Femsa, which is originally from Mexico and is now the second-largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the world, acquired Coca- Cola Bottlers Philippines Inc. in 2013. That takeover also laid the founda- tions for Alpla production to be estab- lished in the country. Alpla began its in-house installation just one year later and, since then, it has met Coca- Cola’s huge demand for preforms and bottles with outputs of approximately 1.5bn preforms and around the same volume of finished PET bottles. The range of production here at the factory includes around 20 different preform types, ranging from 9.5g to 94g and including PCO 1881, 29/25, 28mm reinforced and 38mm necks. 70% of the preforms are used by Femsa for CSD; roughly 25% for water; and 5% for hot and/or cold fill applications. In addition to this production facility, Alpla has an additional in-house facil- ity at the Coca-Cola factory in Santa Rosa, approximately 10km away. The company employs approximately 230 people across the two locations; 130 of them at the Canlubang plant. “We operate in shifts, on a 24/7 basis,” Thomas Ahrer explains. “In the near future we will be upgrading our installation here in Calunbang with a further Husky HyPET 400 4.0 injec- tion moulding machine.” Among other sources, Alpla and Femsa obtain materials from the Taiwan-based Far Eastern Group. The use of rPET will start in 2017, with a target rate of around 25%. www.alpla.com