New Delhi — Petainer Innopac Packaging Pvt. Ltd. is spending $3 million on a molding plant in Mumbai to make preforms for large bottled water containers, a company executive said at a trade show in India.
The company, a New Delhi-based joint venture owned by India's Innopac Containers Pvt. Ltd. and London-based Petainer U.K. Holding Ltd., said the new plant will have the capacity to make about 3 million preforms a year, and will replace product it currently imports from Europe.
"Currently, we are importing preforms from Petainer Czech Republic plant and the plan is to start producing locally by putting up separate preform plant at the Mumbai site by 2018-19," said Tapan Kumar Deb, vice president of sales, in an interview at PackPlus 2017 in New Delhi.
The joint venture currently blow molds water cooler bottles in Mumbai, and has a capacity to produce 125,000 containers each month, more than double the capacity of a typical Indian plant, he said.
The companies set up the joint venture in 2015. Deb said PET is replacing polycarbonate for large water bottles because of life span issues, lower cost and environmental concerns around bisphenol A.
Petainer Innopac is also seeing increased demand for PET beer kegs in India, and is currently importing them from Petainer's Czech Republic plant. They are easier to handle for breweries, and bars and restaurants in India are replacing beer bottles with draft beer, Deb said.
"The trend is catching-up and there is evolving market opportunity," he said. "We are also considering installation of line for making kegs here considering growing demand."
Innopac Containers is a subsidiary of New Delhi-based Hindustan Tin Works Ltd.