The US beverage multinational Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Georgia; www.coca-colacompany.com) said it plans to continue relying exclusively on virgin PET for reusable PET bottles in Germany.

“We see only a small eco-balance effect here through the use of recycled PET and want to avoid reducing the number of circulations through this measure,” a company spokesperson from Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) told Plasteurope.com. CCEP is the largest independent bottler of Coca-Cola beverages in Western Europe with more than 50 bottling plants.

The situation is different for non-reusable PET bottles, for which the average recycled content in Germany in 2022 was 41%. “We would like to further increase the rPET share and permanently achieve a share of well over 50%,” Tilmann Rothhammer, managing director for customer service and the supply chain at CCEP Germany told PIE. “For us to succeed (...), we need sufficient material. Because the fact is, we are currently being slowed down to take the next step. To release the brake, we demand first access rights to recycled PET for beverage producers!”

Against the backdrop of an extended reusability obligation that is under discussion, for which the German environment ministry BMUV (Berlin; www.bmuv.de) recently presented a draft law, the soft drinks group is investing more than EUR 100 mn in reusable solutions this year. Almost half of the sum is to flow into the bottle and crate pool. Coca-Cola is currently building a new refillable glass bottling plant in Lüneburg for around EUR 40 mn; in addition, the re-commissioning of an existing refillable PET plant in Bad Neuenahr is planned for another EUR 15 mn. Both plants are scheduled to go into operation in 2024.

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“Our reusable share in Germany was 35.4% last year, above the market average for non-alcoholic soft drinks of 21.7% in 2019,” the company spokesperson added. More up-to-date figures from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA, Dessau, Germany; www.uba.de) are not yet available.

New, standardised bottle designs for both PET and glass reusables introduced this year are also expected to increase filling capacities. “The standard design reduces changeover times in the filling lines; this increases production capacities,” the spokesperson said. CCEP’s sales volume in Germany in 2022 was just under 3.9 bn litres.

As a further measure, the range of beverages in returnable 1-litre glass bottles is to be expanded by five more brands. From September onwards, in addition to the brands Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar introduced three years ago, Fanta, Sprite, Mezzo Mix, ViO BiO Limo, and Fuze Tea are also to be available in glass containers. The company did not provide information on the share of reusable glass bottles in the returnable pool.