STetra Pak is the engine room of Australia's dairy drive in Asia. It is getting drink manufacturers into better shape in an increasingly cluttered market. And it is giving the good old milk bottle a long life run for its money.
Now it has also acquired a world leader in production solutions for soft drinks, fruit juices and liquid food, with a particular strength in carbonated soft drinks. Miteco is now part of Tetra Pak's realm. The Swiss company was established in 1982 and is a privately held company with 70 employees in Switzerland, Italy, UK and South America.
Tim High, executive vice president of Tetra Pak Processing Systems, stated, "The acquisition of Miteco positions Tetra Pak as a world leader in production solutions for carbonated soft drinks, with an unrivalled product portfolio backed by strong technical support and broad geographic presence. It also extends the company's beverage production capabilities in a number of key areas, including sugar handling, dissolving, refining, mixing and blending beverage ingredients, providing an important complement to our existing portfolio of processing solutions."
Its 2014 growth spurt has had a secondary goal: to make the world's packaging products more sustainable.
Tetra Pak is focused on increasing the use of renewable materials from natural resources that grow back when properly managed, such as wood and sugarcane. And on average, 75% of a Tetra Pak package is paperboard, made from wood.
It is a Forest Stewardship Council certified company committed to sourcing from responsibly managed forests and other controlled sources that aims to eventually use 100% FSC certified paperboard. This percentage has risen from 38% in 2012 to 41% in 2013. Meanwhile, 32 billion Tetra Pak packages carrying the FSC-label reached consumers last year, an increase of more than 5 billion over 2012 and Tetra Pak Oceania delivered more than 31 million FSC-labelled packages to customers in Australia and New Zealand
As a long term ambition, Tetra Pak aims to develop a fully renewable package. One major step forward in 2013 was the global release of the bio-based LightCap™ 30 made from high density polyethylene (HDPE) that derived from sugar cane. Across the portfolio, 1.1 billion packages with such bio-based caps hit the market in 2013, almost doubling the number for 2012.
Here are its major environmental achievements:
Between 2010 and 2013, Tetra Pak reduced the climate emissions from its own operations by 2,000 tons CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), while achieving a 12% growth in the number of packages sold.
In 2013, Tetra Pak improved its CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) score from 77 to 91, compared to an industry average of 49.
Tetra Pak aims to double the global recycling rate by 2020 to 40% by improving consumer awareness, facilitating collection infrastructure and supporting recycling technology development. In 2013, the global recycling rate of Tetra Pak packages reached 24.5%, with about 43 billion being recycled, 4 billion more than the previous year.
According to PlanetArk, 94% of Australians and 30% of New Zealanders were given access to recycling infrastructure in 2013.
Recyclability is a leading catalyst for Tetra product innovations. In 2013, the company launched Tetra Evero Aseptic 1000 Separable Top, for example, so that consumers can detach the plastic top from the carton sleeve, to be recycled separately.
"Achieving environmental excellence is part of the company's strategy towards 2020 because we believe it is crucial for the future of the company and our customers. We drive environmental performance in every step of our operation, from sourcing, development of processing and packaging systems, to services and support provided to customers. This is the very reason that we have continued to be successful in meeting ambitious targets," said Claes Du Rietz, vice president environment at Tetra Pak.
