Coca-Cola to make its own bottles

Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) is investing $35 million in 'blowfill' technology in its South Australian operation, which will enable it to design and manufacture its own PET beverage bottles using less raw materials.

Speaking at Monday's announcement, CCA Managing Director Warwick White said that blowfill technology is the single largest capital investment in CCA's history and will fundamentally change the nature of manufacturing in the business.

"The introduction of this technology has enabled us to redesign and lightweight our entire small carbonated soft drink and water PET bottle range. With innovation comes benefits which, in this case, are good for CCA, our customers and the communities we operate in. They include significant cost savings, production efficiency gains, increased product shelf life and stacking ability.

"Blowfill is also delivering against our key environmental sustainability goals in both energy and water savings and is expected to reduce the carbon footprint of our beverage containers by over 20%. A significant portion of these savings will come from bottle redesigns that use less PET resin, with others from the elimination of the need to transport empty bottles to CCA bottling facilities and energy savings on the line. This investment continues our lightweighting journey - a journey which has already seen CCA achieve a 20% increase in packaging raw material efficiency since 2004," White said.

At a Group level, CCA has committed to spending approximately $450 million to install blowfill technology at all of the company’s production facilities in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The completion of works at Thebarton mark the company's largest single investment in the technology to date.

CCA's Thebarton facility has been home to the production of Coca-Cola in South Australia since it opened in 1952 and today, Coca-Cola Amatil employs approximately 450 South Australians.

Source: Coca-Cola Amatil