Retal Industries to expand BOPET

European packaging company Retal Industries is planning to raise the bioriented PET (BOPET) film capacity at its recently launched plant in Zhukov, Russia next year.

Retal is a leading regional injection moulder of PET bottle preforms as well as one of Europe's top five PET resin producers. It started up the 16,000tpa Zhukov unit, which is Russia's first domestic BOPET maker, late last year.

Initially, the new plant has operating up to a phase one capacity of 14,400 tonnes as the first domestic source substituted imported BOPET film.

But Retal will need to increase production to satisfy growing Russian demand for its product and plans to boost output at Zhukov to the unit's full 16,000 tonnes capacity.

The group, with its headquarters in Limassol, Cyprus, is maintaining production of APET film at around 7,500 tonnes at a new film plant opened last summer in Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Retal said that output will continue through 2009 although the unit is capable of turning out 8,000tpa.

Retal is one of the biggest 100 private companies operating in Russia and earmarked ?140m for capital investment projects to be spent over 2007 and 2008. Between 2008 and 2010 it is committed to investing a further ?130m on new projects.

The company runs 16 plants in eight European countries as well as Russia. It estimated that its annual sales would reach ?740m in 2007 and expects turnover to leap to almost ?1bn this year.