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Plastic bottles and closures: Market trends in Europe

AMI Ltd. reviews here some of their findings on where further penetration of plastic materials in consumer rigid plastic container markets may exist.

Pw 2600 Eurooutlook 1

Growth opportunities for blow moulders, especially those in PET, are in no short supply. AMI’s research suggests that the latent potential for PET barrier bottles in beer, wine, and milk is equivalent to the current size of the carbonated soft drinks (CSD) market for PET bottles in Europe, which was just under 1 million tonnes in 2009.

Glass is reaching its limits in terms of light-weighting, and there is growing doubt among the brand owners about its ability to evolve with market needs. The growing emphasis on the carbon footprint of packaging supply and end of life management will prove a compelling competitive advantage for plastic packaging. In particular, PET will present an increasingly persuasive case in terms of sustainability, technical performance, and aesthetics. The future growth of the blow moulded bottles business in Europe will increasingly be driven by the growth in PET packaging in new markets.

The potential in beer and alcoholic drinks is highlighted by the low penetration achieved to date with plastic bottles, estimated by AMI to account for just 7% of the packaging for these products in Europe. While PET bottlers have long coveted these markets, without ever achieving that step-change breakthrough, there is now a growing interest in and acceptance of PET for beer and other alcoholic drinks driven by three things: the improved economics of bottle production compared to glass, PET’s favourable LCA, and the growing emphasis on pack weight reduction. One litre-plus PET bottles are already widely used for beer packaging in Eastern Europe and here their market penetration is close to 45%. PET bottles work in Eastern Europe because they do not require the same shelf life as in Western Europe. Beer packaged in PET is generally consumed within 5 weeks. However, the monolayer bottles used incorporate an O2 scavenger to support a 4-month-plus shelf life to minimise the risk of spoilage.

In Western Europe, PET beer bottles are predominantly used for sizes of 500mL and below. These can be found in Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia. The drivers behind the introduction of beer in PET bottles in Western Europe have been legislation, the environmental lobby, and the wholesale movement to PET bottles for one-way packaging in Germany. The Western European brewing industry favours integrated blow moulding and filling of one-way PET bottles as the most effective production strategy. However, this is still more expensive than one-way glass bottles, which continues to suppress penetration levels. Over the long term, demand is expected to be buoyed by

• the improving economics of PET, through raw materials cost reduction and production efficiency and scale, making pricing comparable to glass bottles
• the favourable LCA of one-way PET versus glass
• the growing emphasis on and commercial benefits of pack weight reduction.

Even so it is likely to take PET some time yet to knock glass off its perch. At AMI we forecast the demand for PET bottles in this market to advance at around a rate of 10% annually in these applications over the next 3-4 years.

Other opportunities are expected to emerge in food markets, where plastic bottles have yet to make a major impact. The constraint thus far has been the simple fact that high-speed hot filling and retort technologies used to package food already exist for jars, cans, and cartons. However, plastic bottles are expected to be able to make penetration gains over the next few years thanks to growing investment in aseptic cold filling, improved barrier monolayer PET bottles, and the sustainability argument. For example, jam in PET is well established in the USA, and Europe is expected to see an increasing number of introductions in squeezable PET bottles for this product over the next five years.

The UK enjoys the highest penetration level of squeezable bottles for jam in Europe, where they are already widely used for table top sauces. Within the rest of Western Europe steady penetration gains in sauces and spreads will underpin demand growth, whilst demand in Central and Eastern Europe will evolve with the further development of the packaged goods industry. The universal driver is user convenience in terms of squeezability, dosage control, ease of handling and safety, and again, pack light-weighting initiatives.

In the UK, the move into plastic bottles in jams has been led by Premier Foods on the Chivers and Hartleys brands. Supermarket own brands have been close followers. In Germany, the chocolate spread manufacturer Cebe has introduced a PET jar made by Alpla to reduce the pack weight from 198 g (glass) to 23 g. The light weight container has a blown rather than injection moulded neck, saving 5 g in PET.

While beer and solid food markets represent large, untapped opportunities for plastic blow moulded bottles, for now the blow moulded bottles market is still largely driven by developments in the mineral water and household chemicals markets, where plastic bottles account for more than 90% of the packaging used. In these markets the trends are more about inter-material competition, with growing volumes of recycled PET being used in mineral water bottles and growing use of PET bottles in household chemicals packaging thanks to a reduction in the price point of PET versus HDPE and a growing preference for clear packaging to display the product.

Within the bottled water industry in Europe, glass bottles are still used for premium brands served at restaurant tables. However, the development of premium, glass-like PET resins promises to open this niche to plastic bottles over the next five years, as a light-weight, shatterproof alternative with greater scope for design flexibility. For example, Novapet of Spain has developed a glass-like, premium PET resin to produce a thicker-walled bottle, to give it the appearance and haptics of a glass bottle. Although three times heavier than a conventional PET bottle, it is still five times lighter than glass, making a considerable contribution to weight saving in transport, with minimal quality compromise. This may also open up scope for penetration of the table wine and other alcoholic drinks sector.

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