How Petainer’s circular packaging helps global brands shrink their carbon footprint
Committed to recycled materials and circularity, Petainer strives to help businesses reduce their carbon footprint while delivering their sustainability goals. This is achieved through the delivery of innovative, sustainable packaging solutions manufactured with a focus on quality, performance, and environmental responsibility. With locations and staff in the Europe and Americas regions, the company is well-prepared to assist its customer base. Its international presence ensures that Petainer can address challenges promptly and efficiently, leveraging local expertise and resources. We learn more about the company’s activity from Hugh Ross, who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Group Marketing Director Jack Denley.
“Our philosophy is quite simple; we help customers grow without their carbon footprint growing alongside them. We primarily manufacture with PET to create products that aid in decarbonizing established markets. For instance, beverages are often packaged in carbon-intensive materials like glass or steel, which are heavy, energy intensive to produce and have a high carbon footprint. To address this, we offer a lightweight PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) plastic alternative. We focus on the beverage sector with solutions for mineral water, carbonated soft drinks, beer, wine, spirits and more. In the beer sector, we provide a one-way keg which serves as a lightweight alternative to traditional steel kegs. This is particularly suited to brewers who export beer. In the soft drinks segment, we produce lightweight preforms which allow customers to blow their own bottles. Our team is especially adept at producing reusable PET products in large format in the form of watercoolers and small format in the form of reusable bottles, which are established in South America, Germany and soon more broadly across the EU,” Jack begins.
As an international company, Petainer manufactures in several countries across Europe and the USA. “Currently, we have production sites in three countries: two in the USA, one facility in Sweden, and another in Czechia. Lidköping focuses on preforms and bottle production, staffed by a team of experts who manipulate PET and recycled PET resin into bespoke and off the shelf products for major producers in the Nordics. Meanwhile, our Czechia facility specializes in reuse, producing most of our reusable PET bottle solutions, as well as our keg and watercooler products. The USA sites are the newest additions to our footprint, combining expertise in reuse for both large and small formats. In the current political climate Petainer’s ‘Made In USA’ model has brought the added benefit of protecting our customers from the supply chain uncertainty and cost threat created by the tariff regime. The US sites handle a significant amount of keg production and manufacture watercoolers, servicing the Americas region. We are particularly well-known in Europe and Americas for being a key driver of major brand sustainability strategies. In particular, we excel in recycled content for both single-use and reusable products. Furthermore, Petainer is well known as the technical leader in reusable packaging solutions,” Hugh continues.
Ever ahead of the market trends, Petainer is preparing to open a new site in Valencia, Spain. “Over the last few years, we have been converting the Iberian market from polycarbonate to PET watercoolers, in advance of strict EU legislation banning BPA content, polycarbonate watercoolers. Opening a factory in Valencia will enable us to supply from within the Southwest Europe region and get closer to other markets of relevance such as North Africa. This facility will be close to the port in Valencia and will be operational by the start of 2026. The Spanish market is moving faster than others in Europe with its focus on reuse, so the Valencia facility will support the market transition with an ‘in region’ supply of reusable packaging,” he explains.
Jack discusses Petainer’s longstanding commitment to sustainability in light of the increasing demand for sustainable solutions. “Historically, sustainability has
always been at our core, stemming from our commitment to using PET, the most widely recycled plastic in the world. PET is lightweight and offers numerous benefits to enhance sustainability for our customers. As a packaging manufacturer, we fall within our customers’ Scope 3 emissions, who are more focused on sustainability than ever before. Packaging accounts for between 30-70 percent of our clients’ total emissions, so any efforts to reduce this are crucial.” Hugh adds: “I joined Petainer at the beginning of 2018, a time when plastic was facing significant criticism, and we always felt the industry was quite misunderstood. All packaging is a victim of the collection infrastructure, but with sensible collection systems like deposit return schemes, bottle collection rates frequently reach 98 percent. All of this collected material can be recycled and put back into new products. No doubt the majority of the readers of this interview will have drunk from bottles which contain recycled material.
“The waste collection process involves working with suppliers who can take back these baled bottles, grind them up, and transform them into what we call flake or pellets. These materials are then supplied back to manufacturers like Petainer. In our case, we reintegrate them into our injection molding lines to create preforms with up to 100 percent recycled content with equal performance to a virgin plastic product. PET plastic makes everything lighter, which reduces energy use. In fact, some major organizations have shifted their entire sustainability marketing campaigns from glass to plastic because they recognize that the latter is a far more eco-friendly option.”
Petainer has made a significant contribution to the shift towards production of PET bottles using the waste stream generated by end-of-life bottles. Looking forward, this activity will continue. “However, as in-market brands and market regulators recognize the carbon and cost benefits of reusable PET compared to heavier alternatives such as glass, we expect to see an expansion of the use of PET to more reusable solutions. Reusable PET is regarded as a leading sustainability solution by independent organizations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, given its weight and durability advantages. Petainer is ready to help both its current and future customers in realizing the full potential of PET in the coming years as they constantly deliver on their ever more ambitious sustainability goals,” Hugh ends.