Nonmetallics Department

Coca-Cola Begins Global Launch of PlantBottle
The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, has announced that beverages in its PlantBottle packaging are arriving on store shelves in select markets throughout the world. The company plans to produce 2 billion of the special plastic bottles by the end of 2010.

PlantBottle plastic bottles are made partially from plants, reducing Coca-Cola’s dependence on petroleum. Coca-Cola claims the bottles are 100 percent recyclable, with preliminary research indicating that, from the growing of the plant materials through to the production of the resin, the carbon footprint for the PlantBottle packaging is smaller than for bottles made with traditional PET (polyethylene terephthalate).

“Today, we are taking a major step along our sustainable packaging journey as The Coca-Cola Co. becomes the first to market with a recyclable PET plastic bottle made partially from plants,” says Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO for The Coca-Cola Co. “From Coke brands in Copenhagen to Dasani water in the Western United States, we are starting to roll out the first generation of the bottle of the future.”

Starting this coming January, select markets in the Western United States will feature PlantBottle packaging for Dasani water.

Smurfit-Stone Files Reorganization Plans
Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., with headquarters in Chicago and Creve Coeur, Mo., its subsidiaries and affiliates have filed a joint plan of reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The company says it aims to emerge from Chapter 11 protection in early spring of 2010.

Smurfit-Stone also announced that it has prepaid all of the roughly $43 million owed on its outstanding U.S. term loan under its DIP (debtor-in-possession) financing and says it expected to prepay the approximately $7 million outstanding balance of its Canadian term loan under the DIP financing by the end of December.

Key elements of the Smurfit-Stone’s proposed reorganization plan include:

• The company and its subsidiary, Smurfit-Stone Container Enterprises Inc., would merge to become a reorganized company that would be governed by a board of directors that would include the company’s chairman and CEO Patrick Moore, President and COO Steven Klinger and a number of independent directors to be selected by an Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in consultation with the debtors.

• The assets of the Canadian debtors would be sold to a newly formed Canadian subsidiary of Smurfit-Stone free and clear of existing claims, liens and interests in exchange for the repayment of the secured debt obligations of the Canadian debtors, cash or common stock of the reorganized company for distribution to the Canadian debtors’ unsecured creditors if they vote to accept the plan and the assumption of certain liabilities and obligations of the Canadian debtors.

• Reorganized Smurfit-Stone and its newly formed Canadian subsidiary would assume all of the existing obligations under the qualified defined benefit pension plans in the United States and Canada sponsored by the debtors as well as all of the collective bargaining agreements in the United States and Canada between the debtors and their labor unions.