PETpla.net Insider 01+02 / 2020

BOTTLING / FILLING PET planet Insider Vol. 21 No. 01+02/20 www.petpla.net 20 Material savings in Gujarat It’s all ultralight! by Kay Barton August 2019 We met: Mr Chintan Patel, Director Western India – more precisely: Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat – is the home of plastics processor and water bottler Optima Polyplast, and its sister company Optima Plastic Industries. In just six years, the company has developed from a straightforward closures retailer to a manufacturer and full-range supplier of closures, preforms, bottles and bottled water. Right from the start, the companies attached considerable importance to material savings and focused on the manufacturing of ultra-light products. We talked with Director Mr Chitan Patel about the development and activities of the Optima Polyplast. Tour Sponsors: “In the two years that followed our launch as a retailer of caps and closures in 2013, the market showed increasing promise,” recalls Chitan Patel, a university-qualified pharmacist. “The positive resonance convinced us that we could also become a manufac- turer. Together with my partners Dhiraj Patel and Harish Patel, we founded Optima Plastic Industries in 2015. We began manufacturing closures, which led to the vision of being able to offer a complete product; that brought us to where we are today.” Optima has, since 2006, also operated a bottling plant for water in another part of the business; the complete packaging is now to be manufactured in-house. “Our idea was for the packaging to save on materials and costs, and that we could pass these savings on,” he explains. Optima’s own water brands – “La Aqa+” and “Reva” – should especially benefit from any savings coming from the reduced use of materials in the future, enabling the products to be offered on the market at a lower price. Although the bottling plant is structurally separate it is located on the same site as the plastics process- ing plant, after Optima decided that it wanted to channel everything into a single location. The company currently employs 120 workers on a 3-shift basis and has an annual turnover of US$12.6 million. It has invested US$4.3 mil- lion in its business which, for strategic reasons, is located on a 2,300m 2 site near the centre of Ahmedabad. The city, which has almost eight million inhabit- ants, offers considerable potential in the beverages and supply industry. The state government supports busi- ness start-ups and expansions through attractive tax models and cutting-edge infrastructure for utilities and transporta- tion, for example. Optima researched and developed its products for around a year, before creating lightweight preforms for water bottles that are, at the same time, designed to have sufficient resilience to handle extended transport routes. “We can now manufacture 6g preforms for 0.2l bottles, 9g for 0.5l, and 13.8g for 1l,” Mr Patel says, indicating his portfo- lio. “Our research findings are that the 1l bottles are among the lightest in the world. We also make what we consider to be the lightest closure in India; just 0.8g at 23mm. In using such a reduced amount of material, we can now offer the water bottle at a price which is approximately 35% lower.” Three compression machines from Sacmi manufacture the closures, with an annual output of approximately 220 million units. Around five per cent of production is exported. Optima also supplies 28mm closures for third-party fillers and 28mm and 25mm closures for pharmaceutical customers, including Torrent Pharma, Intas Pharma, Cadila Pharma and Yash Pharma. Preforms are manufactured on Ferromatik Mila- cron equipment, while Shyam Plastic Machinery handles the blow moulding, with two automatic systems and one semi-automatic. Total output of pre- forms and bottles is over 180 million units. In the filling plant, Optima uses rotary equipment from Hilden, run- ning at 300bottles/minute for filling and capping. The material, amounting to approximately 250 tonnes per month, comes from Saudi Arabia or local Indian manufacturers. As a supplier of preforms and closures, this segment accounts for around 35% of the total turnover. “We already have a unique sell- ing point, in our consistent lightweight claim,” explains Mr Patel. “On average, we save approximately 45% on mate- rial compared with our competition, a saving we pass on to our customers. Last but not least, the low cost of the materials is also a signal for a greener India. In the coming year, we want to install more new machines and to make further investments in a franchise model over the medium term,” said Mr Patel. “We want to gain a foothold in other Indian states both independently and through joint ventures, and manufacture there locally with the same strategy.” www.optimapolyplast.com Director Chintan Patel with a bottle of La Aqa+ 25mm compression moulding closures for pharmaceuticals