MOSCOW (MRC) -- Packaging supplier Berry Global Group Inc. has announced plans to spend more than USD110 million to expand its polypropylene thermoforming capacity in North America, said Canplastics.
The investment is designed to allow the Evansville, Ind.-based company to increase the manufacture of clear drink cups and lids for quick-service restaurants, coffee shops, convenience stores, and other foodservice markets.
“Foodservice brand owners are steadily increasing their forecasted volumes with our production for access to our 30-plus active patents across clear cups and lids,” Berry officials said in a Sept. 14 news release. “In addition, customized plastic cup and lid brand owner solutions are a rapidly increasing market trend, pulling volume from alternative substrates since 2017."
The news release also noted that polypropylene is viewed as one of the most sustainable and environmentally responsible transparent substrates available in the market today. "Our increased capacity will produce clear cups and clear lids made of polypropylene ( PP), which can be recycled into new packaging or one of the many other end markets for PP,” the company said.
Berry did not announce exactly where all of the expansions will take place, but did say they are expected to be operational in 2022, and to create a total of 200 new jobs.
As MRC informed earlier, Berry Global Group, Inc. (Evansville, Indiana) says it will break ground in September on a new polypropylene (PP) recycling facility in Leamington, United Kingdom, that it says will produce food-grade materials with a target purity standard of 99.9%. The new facility will be housed in a purpose-built, net-zero carbon, centrally located 13,000-square-meter, or 139,931-square-foot facility, offsetting CO2 emissions with local tree planting.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
Berry Global Group, Inc. create innovative packaging and engineered products. Harnessing the strength in its diversity and industry leading talent of 47,000 global employees across more than 295 locations, the company partners with customers to develop, design, and manufacture innovative products with an eye toward the circular economy.
MRC