How Pepsi and Coke's Plant-Based Bottle Wars Affect Manufacturers

By Rick Gallisa

One of the best indirect results of the headlong rush companies are making into sustainability initiatives is the rise of green competition. We see it across sectors, as companies work to out-do each other on green efforts and green messaging
Whether it's FedEx and UPS, Procter & Gamble and Unilever, or Coke and Pepsi, companies are increasingly pushing each other to do more, faster to reduce their impacts.
That last example is especially relevant. For example, The Coca-Cola Company has recently taken its years of environmental initiatives -- from energy-efficient lighting to hybrid vehicle fleets -- to a new level, with the introduction in 2009 of the PlantBottle, a PET beverage bottle made of 30 percent plant-based plastics.
The PlantBottle was a game-changer for green packaging on its own, giving a highly innovative product about the highest-profile platform it could have.
But then its chief competitor raised the bar.
Earlier this year, Pepsi announced an aggressive objective to introduce a 100 percent plant-based PET bottle to the market in 2012.
These competing initiatives will have a big impact on consumer awareness as well as the landscape for green packaging. And they will no doubt lead to a shake-up of how packaging companies do their daily business.
Pushing the envelope on what constitutes green means frequent new product designs and new technologies if you want to compete in the packaged drinks markets. As a manufacturer, this means you must work with new, untested materials ... and expect there will be many adjustments necessary to stay relevant.
What are the operational and manufacturing concerns that power this movement?
Behind-the-Scenes Challenges to Manufacturing Green
If you're in the industry, you know all too well that product packaging requires a high degree of proficiency, flexibility and responsiveness to a wide range of market factors and consumer whims. All consumer products manufacturers face these issues. The challenge is how to simultaneously deal with the pressures of reducing cost and improving efficiency while following good manufacturing practices and green initiatives.
Next page: Four key challenges, and how to overcome them
As an Industry Director at Apriso, where we design software to help manage manufacturing efficiency, I have the opportunity to work closely with packaging manufacturers to help them tackle these challenges. One of our clients is Amcor, a global packaging giant with 300+ sites in 40+ countries. They will be greatly impacted -- directly or indirectly -- by Pepsi's objective of introducing a 100 percent plant-based PET bottle by next year.
Based on what I have observed in my work with Amcor, there are four key challenges and considerations that consumer goods manufacturers should consider as they continue to push the envelope on green:

• More Manufacturing Flexibility is Better. As companies work to incorporate newer, more sustainable materials into packaging, they need a manufacturing system that can adapt quickly to changes in a way that doesn't impact operations. Typical bottling plants run non-stop, 24x7, 365 days a year, with close to "Just-in-Time" deliveries. This makes it very difficult to develop and incorporate new designs into the process without a very sophisticated view and understanding of your whole manufacturing process.

• Make the Product and Process Sustainable. It's not just about the end product. Consumer Goods manufacturers must remain agile to adjust both product ingredients and the process of how their packaging is made, to ensure it is made in the most energy efficient way with as little waste as possible. This requires strong manufacturing discipline and a clear, real-time window into operations, materials and output. It's not enough to say the bottle is made of recycled material.

• Stay Innovative. Green packaging and manufacturing is clearly not just a fad, and will continue to accelerate in the years ahead. It's important for Pepsi and so many other consumer product manufacturers to continue to set aggressive goals to introduce greener product formulations to help their customers differentiate their own branding and marketing efforts.

• Drive best practices for efficiency sake. Innovation is clearly needed to support brand conscious consumer product companies. However, packaging companies must continue to do so at very high levels of efficiency. The market demands innovation, yet will not tolerate inefficiencies that translate to higher costs.

As a person who drinks packaged beverages, it is easy to take for granted a new bottle design, embedded temperature gauge or other innovative feature. From a manufacturer's perspective, however, these innovations can add a lot of stress to their systems, processes and employees. In the end, however, we all win with more environmentally friendly packaging that can help preserve our natural resources and leave our planet in better shape for our future generations.