Mexico Coke bottler saving money with lightweight preforms

MEXICO CITY (Nov. 5, 11:35 a.m. ET) -- Coca-Cola FEMSA SA de CV, the world’s second-largest Coca-Cola bottler, accounting for 13 percent of global sales, plans to extend the use of its PET short-height bottle finishes from Mexico to all its markets in Latin America within 12 months, according to the company’s packaging development manager.

The design cuts the weight of the company’s 16-ounce bottles to 20.5 grams, from about 25 grams.

“We have just finished converting all 23 of our one-way disposable bottle lines in Mexico” to the new standard, the manager, Lobel Baotic, said in a Nov. 4 telephone interview.

Over the next year, the Mexican company’s other disposable bottle lines in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala will all be converted to meet the same standard, which, according to Baotic, in Mexico alone saves the company at least $10 million in PET resin purchases per year.

Coca-Cola FEMSA is one of 12 Coke bottlers in Mexico and produces about half of the Coke beverages sold there. Relevant brands include Coke, Sprite, Fanta and Lift.

Two thirds of its Mexican sales are of the 16-ounce bottle. Baotic described the 20.5 gram design as the lightest carbonated beverage bottle of its size in the world.

The bottles are also five millimeters (0.19 inches) shorter than their predecessors.

According to Baotic, Owens-Illinois Inc introduced the first short height closure beverage bottle in PET in 2005. “But the closure could not be applied to a high-speed line” and was restricted to lines running at no more than 600 bottles per minute, he said. “We have lines that fill up to 940 bottles per minute.”

Coca-Cola FEMSA’s main bottle supplier, Alpla México SA de CV, of Toluca, together with Husky Injection Molding Systems México SA de CV, started work on solving the problem in 2006.

The result was a preform which can be used in on high-speed filling lines. Coca-Cola FEMSA launched the design in 2007.

According to Boatic, the saving on resins for Coca-Cola FEMSA has been tremendous. The company also has saved money by using up to 35 percent of post consumer recycled content. The material comes from a recycling plant in Toluca owned jointly by Alpla (40 percent), Coca-Cola de Mexico (30 percent) and Coca-Cola FEMSA (30 percent). The $20 million plant has been operating for five years.

Boatic expects the lightweight bottle to be the standard for at least 15 years.

Coca-Cola FEMSA’s capital stock is owned 53.7 percent by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fomento Económico Mexicano SA de CV (FEMSA), 31.6 percent by wholly-owned subsidiaries of Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. and 14.7 percent by the public.

Its publicly traded shares are listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange and as American Depository Shares (ADS) on the New York Stock Exchange.

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