Spanish PET producer La Seda de Barcelona (Barcelona; www.laseda.es) is shifting its focus toward the bottle market. Beneficiary is subsidiary Artenius PET Packaging (APPE, Wrexham / UK) that now accounts for the bulk of La Seda’s sales. This week, Artenius gained additional importance as its parent signed a EUR 15m exclusive 10-year contract with Spanish dairy Leche Pascual (Aranda de Duero; www.lechepascual.es), which is launching a PET milk bottle. In January, La Seda will take over production of 500m PET preforms for milk, water and juices at the dairy group’s Trescasas (Segovia) plant.

According to La Seda president José Luis Morlanes, filling milk in PET had been considered infeasible up to now. To solve the problem of UV penetration, the chemical producer has developed a new coating that it says will improve the plastic’s competitiveness with glass. La Seda gained a foothold in the packaging segment with the 2007 takeover of the former Schmalbach-Lubeca business from Amcor – see Plasteurope.com of 22.06.2007 – and late last year agreed to manufacture PET wine and juice packaging for Spain’s J. García Carrion. This year, it entered the spirits market through a deal with Swiss retailer Coop for a PET vodka bottle.

For the first nine months of 2009, La Seda reported group turnover of EUR 686m, down 39% against the 2008 period. Including debt and restructuring charges, operating profit was negative at EUR 85m and the net loss totalled EUR 385m. Artenius was the star performer, with sales of EUR 415m and a higher than expected EBITDA of EUR 44m.

In early November, the troubled PET group and its creditor banks agreed on refinancing a EUR 600m loan – see Plasteurope.com of 09.11.2009 – that is now believed to have been accepted by 80% of creditors. Later in the month, Spanish media reported that La Seda was close to receiving a capital injection of EUR 150m from Portugal’s BA Vidro (Lisbon; www.bavidro.com), which planned to take a stake of up to 30% – see Plasteurope.com of 30.09.2009. Another partner was being sought to provide cash of around EUR 50m.