Tetra Pak sees sales increase 4.3% in 2012
Swiss packaging giant Tetra Pak says it reached net sales of €11.16 billion in 2012—up 4.3% from 2011 in comparable terms. The company’s packaging solutions businesses achieved net sales of €9.87bn for the year, 4.2 percent higher (comparable terms) than in 2011, with solid growth in south and southeast Asia, Central and South America, North America, eastern Europe and Central Asia, and double digit growth in the Middle East and Sub-Sahara Africa. Sales from processing solutions reached €1.29bn, growing 5.2% year on year (comparable terms).
“The economic situation is still tough, with growth slower than before, particularly in China and Brazil, our fastest growing economies. We’ve had to make some tough decisions over the past year to enable us to continue to invest in the development of new products, services and facilities that will enable our customers, retailers and suppliers to thrive in the years to come,” Tetra Pak president and CEO Dennis Jönsson says. “We remain focused on providing our customers with the right products at the right price to meet the constantly changing needs of the market place.”
The year saw the launch of a number of new products and features by Tetra Pak, including: Tetra Navigato, Tetra Pak’s packaging and processing service portfolio; Tetra Pak iLine XT, with a new graphical user interface, enabling production integration across the factory floor – from processing and packaging to interfacing to customer warehouse management systems; Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 & 250 ml Edge portion packs; Tetra Top Carton Shot with Lokka opening, a 100 ml package with a tear-off openin; Tetra Gemina Aseptic Leaf and Crystal packages with HeliCap 27; and Tetra Brik Aseptic 1000 Mid LightCap 24, featuring Tetra Pak’s lowest cost screw cap
In another step towards its goal of producing 100% renewable packaging, Tetra Pak launched LightCap 30, the first of several caps developed using bio-based polymers, derived from sugar cane. Tetra Pak packages with bio-based polymer caps grew to 610 million in 2012, up from 80 million in 2011.
Through 2012, Tetra Pak continued to invest in facilities to better support its customers’ activities in different parts of the world. It inaugurated a Coconut Knowledge Centre and completed a €42 million investment to upgrade and expand its operations in Singapore; it inaugurated a new laminator, completing a €25 million investment at its packaging material factory in Izmir, Turkey and it opened a new packaging material plant in Imatra, Finland. The company also made two acquisitions designed to strengthen technical capabilities in some strategic areas: It acquired the Minneapolis-based Filtration Engineering Company, a US market leader in membrane filtration technology for the dairy and cheese industries, and it acquired the assets of Genius Automação de Sistemas, a São Paulo, Brazil-based specialist in industrial control systems.
