In Australia, the bottle-making sector is currently in the grip of a “three-way war” between Winemakers Glass Corporation, a South Australian-based company, San Miguel, the Philippine-based food and d…
In Australia, the bottle-making sector is currently in the grip of a “three-way war” between Winemakers Glass Corporation, a South Australian-based company, San Miguel, the Philippine-based food and drinks giant, and ACI, a subsidiary of the Anglo-Australian group, BTR. 400 million bottles are produced in Australia each year and the market itself is currently dominated by ACI which produces 17% of the market total. Winemakers Glass Corp. now plans to construct a A$ 70 million wine bottle plant in Adelaide; once completed the plant will be capable of manufacturing 50 million bottles a year. San Miguel Corporation recently revealed that it is to build a glass bottle manufacturing plant in Adelaide, Australia, to meet demand from the fast-growing wine industry. San Miguel“s US$ 60-million investment in wine bottling could create the first real internal competition for ACI, a subsidiary of BTR Nylex, whose only competition so far has been from imports (economic only for small bottles, drug and food containers, for example) and alternative packaging (only feasible in some market segments, for example, brewers using aluminium cans and soft drink makers switching to PET plastic).