When Constar, a global provider of PET plastic packaging for food and beverages that employs about 200 at its Philadelphia headquarters, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last December, there were signs that pointed to a quick recovery. The company’s DiamondClear technology, which elevates the barrier performance of PET containers, is one of them, and it was recently approved by the FDA and will now be tested by existing and potential customers.
“We think we’re back as a public company,” says Scott Pleune, vice president for marketing and business development at Constar. “We think we’ve regrouped and we’re moving forward very effectively.”
Constar was saddled with a high-debt load since it went public in 2002, when it was spun off from Crown Cork and Seal. When it emerged from bankruptcy early this year, it didn’t lose business, employees or its technology base, but did shed about $20 million in annual interest payments.
Late last year, AriZona Beverage became the first major brand to commercialize Constar’s Vertical Compensation Technology, a panel-less bottle for hot-fill beverages. Last month, Fog Mountain Merlot became the first California wine in a lightweight, one-liter PET bottle featuring Constar’s MonOxbar oxygen scavenging technology.
Constar has been developing barrier technologies for PET bottles for the last decade, introducing its first successful product in 2000 with Anheuser-Busch’s multi-layer beer bottle that can be found at most stadiums. Along the way, the company made improvements and kept innovating.
With DiamondClear, Constar has eliminated the cloudy-appearance of the bottle and maintained an oxygen barrier, which is crucial to many products–impacting color and flavor of wine and ketchup, for example. It also increases recyclability and reduces environmental impact because of its lighter weight, which is especially attractive to food and beverage makers who use glass packaging.
“We feel this technology gives us more uniqueness in a competitive game,” says Pleune.
Source: Scott Pleune, Constar
Writer: Joe Petrucci