PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2018

9 NEWS PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 10/18 www.petpla.net 1,600 participants at 3 rd Food & Drink Technology Africa The third edition the Food & Drink Technology Africa (FDT Africa) trade fair for the food, beverage and packag- ing industry in South Africa has now firmly established itself on the market. Around 1,600 participants from 81 countries attended the international event, which took place in Johan- nesburg on September 4–6. As a networking opportunity, it offered a platform for the industry to exchange views on current and future trends. A total of 111 exhibitors repre- sented the entire process chain of the food, beverage and liquid food industry. According to the Mechanical Engineering Engineering Industry Association (VDMA), South Africa has the most diverse economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the food and beverages industries are key pillars of the country’s economy. Over the last ten years, the value of the food and beverages produced annually has almost doubled, reaching a value of ZAR392 million (€26 million) in 2017. The VDMA further states that South Africa – whose population’s median age is just 27 – also has a growing and increasingly consumerist middle class, gradually becoming established in the major cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. This emerging middle class requires an increasing amount of food and beverages, prepared and packaged using the latest technology, for which most of the appropriate mechanical equipment is sourced from beyond its borders – and even from beyond Africa entirely. The value of imports of food and packaging machinery in South Africa totalled € 331 million in 2017, of which € 168 million was spent on packaging machinery alone. The trend towards increased imports appears set to continue over the years to come. According to Euromonitor International, beverage sales reached a volume of 11 billion litres in 2017 and are expected to increase by about 18% to 13 billion litres by 2022. The next edition of FDT Africa is already planned and scheduled for 2019 – next year – which is outside the regular two-year cycle of the event. From next year, FDT Africa will be co-located fair with analytica Lab Africa and IFAT Africa. Petra Westphal, Exhibition Group Director of Messe München, said: “Going forward, we will offer exhibitors and visitors of FDT Africa the opportunity to obtain even more comprehensive and cross-thematic information on trends and innovations from the environmental, beverage and food industries, as well as analytics. Together, the co-located trade fairs ensure the best possible knowledge transfer for all industries.” The first analytica Lab Africa, FDT Africa and IFAT Africa joint event will take place at Gallagher Convention Centre in Johannesburg, July 9-11, 2019. www.fdt-africa.com Demeto announced that The Coca-Cola Company will join its industrial advisory board Demeto (Modular, scalable and high-performance DE- polymerisation by MicrowavE TechnolOgy) is a European Project financed by the European Community within the framework of the Horizon 2020. The partners of the consor- tium are working to bring to reality a revolutionary new way to chemically recycle PET, invented by gr3n, which is both sustainable and profitable. The Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) of Demeto is a com- mittee of stakeholders external to the project that will interact with the partners of the consortium to follow its public devel- opments and, most of all, provide feedback and comments to steer the direction of its business development activities. The IAB already consists of 16 companies involved in the complete PET/polyester value chain at different levels, includ- ing: top brands of home textile, sportswear textile, fashion textile, home and personal care and drinks, as well as plastic converters, waste collectors and recyclers. Demeto and The Coca-Cola Company share a common interest in closing the loop of the Plastics Circular Economy. As one of the largest beverage producers worldwide, The Coca-Cola Company relies on PET in various applications, from transport to packaging, and has long been recognised as an industry leader in supporting and enabling PET recycling. By joining the advisory board of Demeto, The Coca-Cola Company supports the first European Project to build an indus- trial plant for chemical recycling of PET. Unlike mechanical recycling, Demeto’s technology allows a complete recovery of PET without any degradation of the material. Thanks to its innovative technology, Demeto will be able to return post- consumer PET into its basic components, Ethylene Glycol (EG) and Terephthalic Acid (PTA). The process is enhanced by microwave radiation to speed up the reaction time and to make it suitable for industrial application. Since the resulting PET is designed to be competitive to virgin PET in both qual- ity and costs, DEMETO offers a serious alternative source of raw materials to the plastics industry, and aims to enable up to 100% recycled content in packaging at parity cost to virgin resin. www.demeto.eu