Headquartered in Pully, Switzerland, Tetra Pak is an international food packaging and processing company. This company was founded in 1943 in Lund, Switzerland by a man named Ruben Rausing. In 2012, Tetra Pak had sales of €11.155 billion compared to €9.98 billion in 2010. As of 2010, Tetra Pak has 43 material packaging facilities serving over 170 countries worldwide. They have 23,425 employees and are currently the largest food packaging company in the world by revenue. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Tetra Pak offers packaging solutions, filling machines and processing solutions for dairy products, beverages, cheeses, ice cream and convenience foods. In addition to processing, they also have distribution tools such as accumulators, cap applicators, conveyors, case packers, film wrappers, line controllers and straw applicators. They are strongly involved in environmental issues and believe in the statement “Renew, reduce, recycle and be responsible: the pillars of environmental responsibility and corporate sustainability. A package should save more than it costs.” The ideology of Tetra Pak's sustainability practices is not directly known by the general consumer, although many consumers have likely purchased a good that uses Tetra Pak technology. They are able to operate in more than one market because Tetra Pak functionality is used for many products of a wide variety. Since each Tetra Pak package has the company name on it, consumers in the market for a different range of products may recognize this product. Tetra Pak doesn't have many competitors on the market; rather, it's competing against an entire market of manufacturers who have found ways to reduce packaging costs without outsourcing. Some competitors include SIG Combibloc, a Swiss manufacturer, and a Chinese packaging company Greatview. Tetra Pak currently dominates the product processing and packaging market, but is currently challenged by innovations developed by manufacturing companies. They are involved in a niche industry and have dominated that industry due to the popularity of their products. The nature of their industry is B-to-B, where they work directly with companies that need food and beverage processing and packaging. Because they don't sell to individual retail customers, they are able to reduce marketing costs by going directly to businesses that need their services. A handful of things can influence the company's operational decisions. The more our environment suffers from industry, the greater the need for sustainable products like this. This market is very attractive for new entrants as there is a lack of companies in the market and a greater need for sustainable and cost-effective packaging. In the case of Tetra Pak India, as the middle class became wealthier, they had more money to spend on food and beverages using Tetra Pak, thus increasing the company's profitability. The philosophy Tetra Pak believes in is reduce and recycle. During their decision-making plans, they constantly keep in mind how they can reduce their impact on the environment. One way they believed they could demonstrate their commitment to the four principles of environmental sustainability was to focus on supporting post-consumer waste recycling programs. While the idea of reducing post-consumer waste is a simple concept, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for recycling in every country. By 2010,approximately 20% of all packaging was recycled. Their goal by 2020 is to increase the recycling rate to 40%, which means that approximately every 2 in 5 packages produced are recycled. They knew it would be difficult, so they turned to opportunities in countries where achieving this goal might be possible. India offered many opportunities for Tetra Pak. In 1988, they partnered with the National Dairy Development Board to deliver cartons of milk to the people of India. This brought them large revenues and allowed them to open 2 more factories in 2007. This can be attributed to India being the second largest country by population and the growing amount of disposable income among the middle class. As more and more people purchased their products, more post-consumer waste was created in India. Tetra Pak knew that recycling in India would be very different from programs in other countries; ultimately this turned out to be an opportunity where many advantages outweighed the disadvantages. Below are some benefits: Collecting and selling waste was a source of livelihood for the vast majority of people living in extreme poverty in the country. o Municipalities in India hire rag pickers to recycle Tetra Paks and other waste, creating jobs for the lower classes and increases TP's overall recycling index score. Tetra Pak containers had strong brand recognition in India which enabled easy identification for rag pickers. NGOs in India were working with municipalities to improve waste management efforts, such as waste sorting and recycling.o This was the first step in the waste value chain in end-to-end recycling that involved segregation of waste at source. The hierarchy of retailers and scrap collectors allowed Tetra Pak to purchase bales of PCC without having to manually extract or sort the waste. Although Tetra Pak is committed to increasing end-to-end recycling progress, the large quantity of TP products sold in India accounts for the majority of its recycling efforts worldwide. Implementing an efficient plan to increase the recycling rate in India had some disadvantages: it was not worth the ragpickers' time to separate TP cartons from the rest of the waste. There were not enough incentives or benefits from the scrap collectors asking for TP. TP cartons generally contained residues of a sweet product, which attracted flies and rats.o This created health problems for ragpickers in addition to the taxing and cumbersome physical effort required to sort these goods. Many manufacturers preferred to burn the cartons rather than send them for recycling, as they were worried that counterfeit products were being sold in these cartons. The process used by Tetra Pak to recycle these products would differ significantly from a program in another country, such as Spain. In Spain there is no class hierarchy like in India. In India, the untouchable class consists of the majority of ragpickers, who are burdened with heavy and unsanitary work. Even if there is poverty in Spain, the average poor person would probably not be as inclined to do manual labor as someone from the untouchable class. Spanish infrastructure also has better waste management methods than Indian infrastructure. Ultimately, the per capita demand for TP products in Spain is significantly lower than the demand in India. With lower demand and better waste management policies, the environmental externalities created in Spain are.
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