The Hon. Michael Atkinson MP Member for Croydon and
Managing Director of Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) Australia,
Warwick White, officially opened two new “blowfill” lines at the company’s Thebarton
production facility in Adelaide
today.
Blowfill technology represents a $35 million investment in CCA’s South
Australian operation, and enables CCA to design and manufacture its own PET
beverage bottles using less raw materials.
White adds 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.”
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.
