Care for Nature: The Foundation Of A Successful Business

High-quality and a responsible attitude towards nature represent the foundations of a successful business. Company Ball Packaging this year celebrates 18 years of doing business in Serbia, and does so as a leader in the production of aluminum packaging and one of the country’s biggest exporters, providing a huge contribution to Serbia’s foreign trade exchange results tion of cans exceeds billions of units, more than half of which is destined for export to 20 markets around the world. Production at these scales obliges us to be responsible when it comes to sustainable development, circularity and recycling. And in accordance with all of that, the company approaches this topic proactively and with great experience. aging can be recycled an unlimited number of times with minimal losses.

Ball Packaging participated in the establishment of the Alliance for Circular Packaging, while you are actually heading that association. What does the Alliance represent and what are its objectives?

In an effort to increase the percentage of recycling and packaging circularity, the Alliance for Circular Packaging was established recently and will be included in discussions on the adoption of new legislation regulating packaging waste management. Here Ball’s Nenad Đurđević explains how important this is for all of us.

How do you view Ball Packaging's position in Serbia today?

— For almost 18 years, Ball Beverage Packaging Europe has been responsibly and carefully building its position in Serbia as a successful company. We haven’t only proven ourselves to be the leader in the production of aluminum packaging, but we can also state unreservedly that we are among the country’s biggest exporters. Our annual produc-

Supporting this claim is the fact that every other can sold in stores has been recycled at least once and is sourced from Ball.

Ball Corporation, within the framework of which the Ball Packaging factory in Belgrade operates, has published a detailed and precise Climate Transition Plan. What does that mean specifically? — The climate transition plan that Ball Corporation presented applies to all factories, including the Belgrade one, and adheres to UN guidelines related to the decarbonization of the economy aimed at halting the rise in global temperatures. When it comes to our business, this specifically means taking certain measures to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% by 2030, as well as reaching the level of complete decarbonization and zero percent CO2 emissions by 2050 at the latest. We have been applying circular economy and recycling principles for years. Around 73% of aluminum cans currently produced in Europe are recycled, while our end goal is to make that 100%, because aluminum pack-

— The alliance consists of leaders in the production of packaging and encompasses almost all materials for packaging food and beverages (glass, plastic, multilayered cardboard packaging, cardboard and paper packaging, as well as metal packaging). We together comprise approximately 65% of the market and possess great experience when it comes to circularity and recycling. That’s precisely why we want to join the discussion on the adoption of new legislation regulating the management of packaging waste. Our goal is to achieve a higher percentage of recycling and circularity. New solutions mustn’t be unfavorable for some of the materials used in packaging, because that could threaten overall production capacities in Serbia.

We unanimously advocate the introduction of a deposit system for all types of disposable beverage packaging, as well as the collecting of packaging in two streams: one for plastic, metal, glass and cardboard packaging that is not included in the deposit system; the other for paper and cardboard.