Bottle capping for the Indian Market?

Are you aware that India is the biggest producer of milk in the world? With its yearly production it leaves the global number 2 USA well behind. Even if you combine the total milk production in Holland, England, France and Germany – all highly developed dairy producing countries – it does not match the total production and consumption of India.

This alone is already reason enough for the Vaassen team to monitor the developments on the Indian dairy market. Can you imagine how many meters of bottle capping foils and precut lids we could sell, if that massive population of over 1 billion people would start to drink a bottle of milk with a Vaassen cap once in every week…

Still, this is very optimistic thinking. The reality is that the Indian dairy industry has reached different levels of development. The biggest consumption is in ordinary milk. The vaste majority is bought from milkmen, who supply it at home, in shops and on the streets in a more or less pasteurized form. People boil it at home to take away the harmful bacteria and consume it therefore at home, unpacked so to say. The form in which the milkmen sell the raw or pasteurized milk is most often in sealed PE bags.

A relatively small percentage of the milk (but still a very substantial figure!) is flavoured, filled in glass bottles with a crown cork and retorted in often relatively old autoclaves. Now this is where Vaassen starts to be interested: the Indian dairy industry will sooner or later decide to get rid of these outdated and unpractical glass bottles and will change over to plastic bottles with a cap or a flat lid that can resist in the heavy retort conditions. This is where the Vaassen success story with bottle caps once started: with the development of a laminated foil that could form such a strong bond between bottle and cap, that the difficult circumstances within an autoclave or sterilisation tower could be overcome. And this is how we once established our reputation as a worldwide leading producer of bottle capping foils and precut lids.

The point is however that developments can’t always be forced. You need a fisherman’s patience, but like a good fisherman you can prepare your conditions in such a way that you can anticipate a good catch! We have therefore invested a lot of effort in presenting ourselves to the Indian dairy industry and support them in the preparation of that big shift from glass to plastic. The key question here is who makes the first big step: will it be the stronger but more conservative dairy coops, or the smaller but more progressive private dairies. We will find out in time and we will make sure we are ready for a good catch!