Indian converters tackle rising PET costs for food and beverage packaging
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- Published on Wednesday, 02 November 2011 12:02
INDIA – With PET prices soaring by about 50% in the past year due to crude oil price increases, converters in India are now lightweighting plastic food and beverage packaging to contain costs in an attempt not to pass rising costs on to consumers.
Instead of burdening consumers by increasing the prices of their products, Indian manufacturers are opting to lower the weight of PET bottles, jars and other containers for food and beverages by cutting down on the plastic content while still maintain the packaging’s functional needs.
Cadbury India, for example, has redesigned its PET jars for its confectionery products, reducing costs by 10-15%.
“PET jars are essential for packing confectionaries as they are the most important medium to take products to the bottom-most level of distribution like the mom and pop shops and petty shops,” explained Sameer Mehandale, associate vice-president, packaging development, Cadbury India.
“Over the years it has been our initiative to reduce packaging costs. Recently we redesigned PET jars by halving the height of the bottle-neck to 21 mm. This also shortened the lid of the jar, thus reducing 10 gms on a 50 gm jar. This has led to a total cost reduction of 10 to 15%,”
For beverages, converters have had to reconcile the need for thicker bottlenecks for aseptic hot-filling with cost reduction.
“In case of beverages, thicker neck is needed when the bottle is hot-filled to 90 degree Celsius to kill the bacteria,” said Vimal Kedia, managing director, Manjushree Technopack. “Manufacturers have altered product processes so that the temperature can be reduced to 65 or 75 degree Celsius.
“This has helped beverage bottles to lose 10-15% weight,” Kedia said, adding that some products, such as packaged fruit juices, carbonated drink and drinking water, are now packaged in redesigned containers with shorter bottlenecks and thinner bottoms.
Kedia also noted that reinforcement techniques are now increasingly used to ensure that lighter packaging containers can withstand pressure during transport and distribution: “Light weight nitrogen is filled inside the neck so that cap does not come under pressure during transit.”
Perfetti Van Melle in India has also made its pouch packs smaller. The company’s head of supply chain in South Asia, Jayant Kumar, said that they have taken efforts to cut down plastic weight by 2-3% annually, particularly this past year, as raw material costs significantly increased.
“We have been working on reducing thickness of jars, reducing extra plastic on pouch packets and redistributing the weight of containers. We have been trying to reduce 2-3% plastic weight every year and this year, as raw material prices have shot up considerably, there is a lot more focus on weight reduction,” Kumar said.
