Tetra Pak to invest to meet growing dairy and beverage demand

Tetra Pak is to invest €90 million to build a new packaging material factory in Pakistan and €30 million in leading edge printing and laminating technologies at its packaging materials plant in Monte Mor, Brazil to meet growing demand in the dairy and beverage industry.

“These investments demonstrate our continuing commitment to support our customers around the world, ensuring faster delivery, better quality, greater convenience and increased flexibility,” says Alejandro Anavi, executive vice president of supply chain operations, Tetra Pak.

The new plant in Pakistan, will have an initial capacity of eight billion packages per year, with the possibility of doubling to 16 billion packages, such as the Tetra Brik Aseptic and Tetra Fino Aseptic. It will be Tetra Pak’s largest facility in the Middle East region for the production of packaging material for liquid food products and it will also export to other countries in the region. Ground?breaking for the new factory is planned for the third quarter of 2008, with the start of commercial production during the second half of 2010.

The technology upgrade at Tetra Pak’s Monte Mor plant includes two key elements: a laminator and a new FlexoProcess printing line, which will offer higher quality and more flexible production choices for customers. The new technologies will increase printing and lamination capacity by 25% – up from the current capacity of about 10 billion packages/year.

In related news, Tetra Pak has purchased Downer MBL, a major company in New Zealand’s important milk powder market. Within the Tetra Pak group it will continue to be responsible for evaporation and powder solutions as part of the Cheese and Powder Systems business unit.