LATIN AMERICA PET 2001
Recent Developments
in PET
Applications and Where it is Likely To Go
Graham Wallis
Datamark, Brazil
| Good afternoon ladies and
gentlemen. |
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| PET started in Argentina
before it came to Brazil, in fact there were several attempts to introduce
PET into Brazil in late 70’s and early 80’s mainly by Celanese and Souza Cruz
in conjunction with Fibrenyle (part of the then Lawson Mardon group – a BAT subsidiary
at the time) but Coca Cola backed off the project, possibly quite rightly so
in retrospect, since PET opened the way later for competitors in the shape of
regional fillers or “tubaineiros” as they are called in Brazil. The
initiative was really ICI’s which acquired the Celanese plant in Bahia and
started polycondensation tests in 1988 in the UK on material from the Aratu
plant. This lead to a further initiative by Celbras owned by the Sieh family
which had taken over Celanese’s activity in Brazil. Celbras owned a small
company called Braspet which paved the way for PET bottle manufacturing by
importing the first Husky machines to Brazil. Prior to this there had been
several attempts, including one by Scarpa, to make PET bottles using Brazilian
equipment but without international technology this was never going to work
well. |
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