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Milena Zavalova: Coca-Cola’s new tethered caps follow the EU Directive with care for the nature

Interview of 24 Chasa with the Kostinbrod Plant Manager

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Mrs. Zavalova, The Coca-Cola System in the country announced just recently a very important innovation, namely the introduction of the bottle with a tethered cap to all its beverages in plastic bottles. Can you tell us more about this step?

Yes, that's right, at the beginning of February we completed the process of converting the production equipment at our plant in Kostinbrod to produce PET packaging with tethered closures. But what necessitated this change? From July 2024, the EU Directive on certain single-use plastics

will require all EU beverage producers to use tethered caps as one of the solutions to increase plastic collection and recycling. But why wait until 2024 when we can bring change right now? We are taking the first step and setting a good example today. To be completely accurate, our company started this big, step-by-step change last year when our Bankia mineral water switched to tethered caps. Since February, the innovation has been implemented for our entire soft-drinks portfolio.

The truth is that the introduction of the attached caps is one of the important steps on our sustainable development path. Attaching the cap may look easy for our partners and consumers, but developing a suitable solution that meets the required technical and safety standards is a rather complex process. Our global R&D teams, our suppliers, and partners, as well as designers, have been working hard for several years to come up with innovative solutions that meet the criteria.  Furthermore, the design of the caps is the result of numerous consumer studies and tests. They have also been tested at Coca-Cola's Packaging Research and Development Laboratory in Brussels to ensure that bottles using our innovatively designed caps are practical, hygienic, safe, and easy to use.

It is also important to clarify that the new cap solutions we develop together with our suppliers are not proprietary and can be used not only by us but also by other companies. Yes, traditionally, we take the first step, but the European Directive will cover all manufacturers within the EU and we believe that in this way we can also be useful to those after us.

You can read the full interview with Milena Zavalova here.


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