EDITOUR PETplanet Insider Vol. 26 No. 04/25 www.petpla.net 10 From plastic motor lubricant bottles to beverages and food PET packaging and caps from Alexandria by Kay Barton Alexandria Company for Industrial Packaging, or ACIP for short, has its plant around an hour south-west of the port city of Alexandria in the industrial area of Borg El Arab El Gedidah City. It is part of the ABCO Group of companies, which also includes the divisions ABCO United for Plastics and Chemicals (ABCO), active in the production of PP and PE containers, and the Alexandria Detergents and Chemicals Company (ADCO), active in the filling of household cleaners, personal and car care products. With ACIP, founded in 2002, PET processing entered the group as a new business segment and produces preforms and bottles for the beverage, food and non-food industries, as well as closures for these sectors, but with a focus on markets outside of standard caps for water and CSD applications. We interviewed Chairman Samy Awad, whose father founded and developed the company. Interview with Alexandria Company for Industrial Packages September 11, 2024 We met: Mr Samy Awad, Chairman Samy Awad has been on board the family business since 1999 and has a bachelor’s degree in economics and minor in business administration from the American University in Cairo (AUC). In the ‘newer part’ of the company, as he told us, we sat together in the meeting room, which also functions as a showroom for the ABCO product range and talked to each other. This is how the company’s success story began in 1970, when father Mahmoud Awad, who has a Bachelor in Engineering degree, founded ABCO as a pure trading company and as a local representative for European machines and accessories. In 1979, he began producing plastic containers himself for the first time as ABCO Plastics. His first project was a PE bottle for motor lubricants - the first ever in Egypt. The idea for this arose from previous work with the lubricant manufacturer Esso (now ExxonMobil), which at the time, like all its competitors, packaged engine lubricants exclusively in tin cans. “My father had the idea of producing the first lubricant bottle made of PE, a real game changer for the industry,” said Samy Awad, explaining the start of the company. The company was able to expand when it moved to the current industrial estate in 1990. Today, ABCO claims to be the largest blow-moulder for PP and PE in Egypt and was the first company in this sector to be certified according to ISO 9002 (QMS) back in the 1990s and received a UN certificate for the transport of dangerous goods for some of its products. Also in the 1990s, the company began to diversify into new areas and gradually moved into the food and beverage sector. “With the founding of ACIP in 2002, we first set our sights on PET processing, an up-and-coming market sector that we were very interested in,” explained Mr Awad. In 2003, ADCO was added as a division for filling household, personal care and car care products. The 9,000m2 plant is ideally located directly in the building next door, which makes the logistical effort between packaging production and filling obsolete. A number of brands, the company’s own brands and also Private Label OEM brands filled to order, totalling over 400 SKUs, come from here, including packaging, closures and contents. The company supplies more than 40,000 customers nationally and internationally, we learned. In 2013, together with Husky, ACIP designed and built a new 12,000m 2 factory for preform moulding, bottle blowing, IML and cap production, including all-electric machinery - the building where we met for the interview. Mr Awad showed some of his products on the table. 28mm, 38mm, 30/25, 29/25, 28/400, as well as dropless neck preforms for beverage, edible oil, detergent and personal care applications are also in the CEO Samy Awad with some of the ACIP products Various PET bottle formats from the Sidel SBO 6 EDITOUR
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