Plastics News Europe - July/August 2019 - 7

temperature - it makes sure its products can deal with freezing winters in
Russia and the burning hot summers
of Kuwait, creating hoses for liquids or
solids that are resistant to temperatures ranging from -20˚C to +60˚C.
Focusing on a popular segment is
another good business practice as
one Bulgarian plastics major can testify. PLASTHIM-T has prospered by tapping the vibrant packaging market.
Its production of biaxially-oriented
polypropylene films (BOPP) has
turned PLASTHIM-T into a significant
European player, designing and producing transparent, metallised, white
packaging films. It also makes flexible
plastic bags, bulk containers and
yarns. Products are delivered to clients in Europe and the United States
and offer strength, the potential for
high-speed printing, coating, lamination, and low moisture rates, improving clients' products' shelf life in
shops and keeping foodstuffs crispy.
Launched 52 years ago in 1967 as
state enterprise during the communist era, in north-west Bulgaria, close
to the Black Sea, PLASTCHIM-T started as a modest-sized plant for processing thermoplastics mainly for
household products. In June 2019,
the company announced the completion of its third plant in Devnya, in the
same region, where a state-of-the-art
BOPP line has been installed. The
10.4-metre German Brückner Maschinenbau line has an output capacity of
up to 600 metre/minute, "adding
60,000 tonnes annual capacity to our
existing 55,000 tonnes - these
115,000 tonnes put us on the map
amongst leading European producers
of BOPP films", said PLASTCHIM-T.
The new plant, which spans
75,000 m2, represents an investment
of over €40m and offers a reliable
higher-tech option for plastics buyers
from the rest of Europe and beyond.
Looking ahead, the company is investing almost €2m in increasing the energy efficiency of its plant in Aksakovo, in the province of Varna, in the
northeast of Bulgaria, again close to
the Black Sea. The Aksakovo site also
produces significant volumes of BOPP
and was PLASTCHIM-T's second plant;
the first was in Tervel, in the same region. Of this investment, more than
€800 thousand was provided by the
European Regional Development
Fund, with the remainder being financed by the Bulgarian government.
Plexistab is also investing to stay
competitive and is planning on purchasing more co-extrusion lines to
make different types and sizes of hoses by the end of 2020. The company's
executive director said the company
also wanted to expand its warehousing and boost its logistics efficiency.
In this way, the company will escape

JULY/AUGUST 2019

Photo: Plastchim-T

MARKETS & BUSINESS

Plastchim-T facilty in Aksakovo

the image - widely expected from
Bulgarian industry - that its key edge
is price, rather than quality: "Our customers' expectations are still rather
associated with a lower price because
Bulgaria is known for its inexpensive
labour and energy costs. But we have
proved over time the high level of our
quality of products and services. Each
of our employees is responsible for
creating a positive image of Bulgaria," Kutseva said.

Bilyana Kutseva,
Plexistab: "Each
of our employees
is responsible for
creating a positive
image of Bulgaria"

This reputation for quality will become increasingly important as the
regulations on single-use plastics take
force, inevitably eroding lower end
product sales. Bulgaria has not been
a legislative laggard in this case. The
Bulgarian government was one of
the first in Europe to tax plastic shopping bags (in 2011), which at the
time reduced demand while increasing informal supplies, taking revenue
away from legitimate manufacturers,
said Todorova from the Branch Association Polymers. However, as an EU
member state, the most significant
change is the formal approval last
May by the EU Council of Ministers of
a new law which will ban commonly
used single-use plastic products, such
as cutlery, plates, straws and cotton
buds s from 2021. "The adopted directive has already resulted in a four-

fold reduction in exports of the
banned products to the European
market and I expect a drop of 70% in
the production of single-use plastics," Todorova told Plastics News Europe. She said this tight timetable
would be short for companies to
re-focus their production, given the
unreliability of commercial investment from the west.
The Bulgarian sector is also wrestling with the European Commission's
goal of making all plastic packaging
recyclable via its action plan to create a
circular economy. China's January
2018 decision to stop being the
world's largest waste importer and to
restrict imports of used plastic has also
prompted change in the Bulgarian
plastics industry, pushing some recyclers into the red: "The stacks of waste
in Europe due to the Chinese ban have
caused companies' profit margins to
dwindle as prices fall, which in some
cases has pushed these companies
into losses," explained Angel Angelov,
spokesperson for leading Bulgarian
plastics recycler Ecoinvest. Angelov
stressed that in Bulgaria, as elsewhere,
continued mixing of paper and plastics
in plastics products complicates sorting and separation for consumers and
recyclers.
These changes are pushing Bulgarian plastics manufacturers to increase their research and development costs. "We are studying
alternative ingredients that preserve
product quality and at the same time,
cover the regulation. For small companies like us, this is a relatively large
resource", Plexistab's Kutseva noted.
She added that while having to follow EU technical regulations can give
Bulgarian producers an edge on the
European market, they may increase
costs and make them less competitive
outside the EU, where such tough
standards may not apply.

Plastics News Europe - July/August 2019

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