PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2021

Editour PETplanet Insider Vol. 22 No. 09/21 www.petpla.net 10 Tour Sponsors: Kick off European Road Show 2021 In the run-up to our European Road Show, we asked a first group of our sponsors and experts from the whole PET value chain about topics that are currently relevant: 1) PETplanet’s latest Roadshow takes a critical look at the European market, which is pick- ing up steam this year after pandemic-related slumps. How has the pandemic affected your business and what are your expectations for the coming months? 2) The European PET bottle market is on the move - not least due to the potential impact of various EU directives. Which of these are particularly relevant for your company and how are you placed to meet them? 3) What future challenges do you see for the PET industry? Karel Keersmaekers, Managing Director at Nissei ASB GmbH 1) During the initial period of the pandemic, there was a high demand for packaging for hand gels and cleaning products. The one step ISBM technology is extremely suitable for the production of this type of packaging, which led to a huge sudden increase in the demand for new machines and moulds for this application. As the pandemic worsened and with longer delivery times due to increased demand for machines and a temporarily production stop at one of our factories, customers began to pre-order machines to ensure future delivery. So overall, I can conclude that the pandemic had a positive effect on our business although it took a tremendous effort for the entire organisa- tion to meet the increased demand and to continue to offer service to our customers amidst the devastating pandemic. 2) The EU packaging directive is the most relevant for our European business and we already witnessed a strong increase in the number of projects for bottles and jars with recycled material content from 25% up to 100%. In addition we have developed new technologies that focus on reducing bottle weight without compromising it’s quality and performance, we have developed return- able PET bottles with reduced weight with our double blow technology and recently have started to market our newest double layer moulding machine that can produce containers with an inner layer of virgin PET and an outer layer of PCR material, enabling the use of recycled materials that are not food approved even for food products. 3) Plastic packaging has received a lot of bad press because of the pollution of land and sea due to careless handling of plas- tic waste. It is the shared responsibility of the producer, consumer and government to make every effort to improve collection to increase circularity and reduce plastic that ends up in the environment. PET is already the world’s most recycled plastic material and with new recycling capaci- ties and recycling methods put in place, I believe it has a bright future ahead as one of the most sustainable materials for all kinds of packaging. At ASB, we con- tinue to develop environment-conscious machines and moulding technologies for every segment of the 3R principle to meet those challenges. www.nisseiasb.co.jp Josep Jimenez, Commercial Director at Side S.A. 1) Our business has grown significantly in the last two years. There have been effects directly related to the pandemic, such as the growth of domestic consump- tion or of cleaning and hygiene products, but they have also been the result of effort and work in recent years, offering the best services and products. 2) We are seeing how the new European directives may affect but we believe that in some cases PET can benefit and we must take advantage of these circumstances. One of the points in which our company believes the most and to which we are committed is recycling and the use of rPET in an ever more exten- sive way. In this sense, we are conducting a support campaign for our clients to make the transition to rPET as soon as possible, and we are also socially aware of recycling. 3) Newmaterials, new resins, new applica- tions for PET, specialisation of sectors, increased energy costs and therefore reduced consumption in production and reduction of resin avail- able on the market. These are the new challenges and also new opportunities that we have for the future. www.sidemachines.com