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GREG MORRIS, EDITOR
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Plenty of options for green glassmaking
Congratulations to WiegandGlas for its efforts to manufacture a truly ‘green’ glass bottle. As you will see in the following news pages and already published on the website - the German container manufacturer is involved in a collaboration to produce bottles made from biomethane, which would subsequently reduce the carbon emission of each bottle. You may recall the recent efforts by Glass Futures and Encirc in manufacturing a bottle made from biofuels, which were subsequently used by bluechip organisations such as Heineken, Carlsberg and Diageo. The bottles smashed the carbon impact of the bottle by up to 90%. I write this in the immediate aftermath of the Hydrogen in Glassmaking digital conference. The conference explored the potential of hydrogen for use in glass manufacturing and how it could help with zero or low carbon glass production. Visitor numbers remained strong throughout both days and attendees were from glass manufacturing plants around the world. These three examples emphasise how important decarbonisation is to the industry. Ahead of legislation in 2030 and 2050 the sector must prove its environmental credentials. If not it risks losing the goodwill of an ever-more environmentally conscious public who want their packaging to be ‘green’. The signs are the glass industry is moving in the right direction.
Sisecam in €255m Hungarian glass facility investment Turkish glass manufacturer Sisecam is to invest €255 million ($310 million) to build a new glass packaging factory in Kaposvár, Hungary. The facility will be built with two furnaces and will have an annual net production capacity of 330,000 tonnes.
The first furnace will start operating in 2023, and the facility will reach full capacity by 2025. The facility will rely on advanced applications of glass melting technology, he added. Electrical melting technology will also be used to mini-
mise the carbon footprint. It will also use industry 4.0 applications and the entire operation will be carried out with the perspective of resource efficiency and natural resources protection, he said in a statement.
KCC Glass breaks ground on Indonesian float glass plant South Korean flat glass producer KCC Glass Corp has broken ground on a new float glass plant in Central Java, Indonesia. The RP 5 trillion site ($350 million) in Batang, Indonesia will occupy 49 acres at the Integrated Industrial Estate.
When completed it will manufacture about 438, 000 tonnes/year of glass for the construction sector. The construction phase is planned to be completed in 2023 and will start operating in 2024. It is KCC’s first overseas glass venture.
KCC Glass plans to sell construction glass to Indonesian and Southeast Asian markets. It aims to gradually expand its factories to become a ‘comprehensive glass cluster’ to target overseas markets. CEO Nae-Hoan Kim said the factory will create 1300 jobs.
2 Glass International June 2021
June news template GL.indd 1
21/06/2021 14:02:52
