Wine gives bottle company a lift

By DITA DE BONI

A burgeoning wine industry has breathed new life into this country's only glass manufacturing plant.

ACI Glass Packaging New Zealand, part of the ACI international group of companies now owned by US-based Owens-Illinois, has just spent $30 million to upgrade its Penrose plant.

General manager Keith Hamilton, who has been with the New Zealand operation for nine months, says the 5 per cent annual growth in wine production has helped to justify the investment in a new furnace, high-capacity bottle-making machine and redesigned production lines.

The plant churns out almost 1.5 million bottles a day.

"We now make about 90 per cent of all wine bottles used in New Zealand, and continue to work closely with the Wine Institute to develop colours and shapes - like the blue wine bottle - which are presenting New Zealand wine in an imaginative way to domestic and international markets," he says.

As part of the facelift, ACI is also retraining its workforce to keep pace with innovations in glass production.

ACI management is coy on figures but admits that an upsurge in alternative packaging such as plastics, tin cans and flexible milk cartons has eaten away at profits over the more recent part of ACI's 75-year history in Auckland.

The company has also experienced declining beer bottle sales with the fall in beer consumption, and the loss of many food manufacturers who traditionally used ACI for glass jars.

Domestic competition in glass jars now comes primarily from the Middle East, where labour costs are low and compliance costs for manufacturers minimal.

The ACI group of companies was sold to Owens-Illinois in March 1998 as part of a $US3.6 billion deal that saw British-based engineering company BTR divest itself of its global glass and packaging business.

Owens-Illinois now oversees the largest manufacture of glass containers in North America, South America , Australia, New Zealand and India, and is the second largest in Europe, owning 144 plants in 24 countries.