Innovation and
intellectual property

Innovation strategy and portfolio, process innovation with suppliers

Management approach

Vetropack pursues product, process and organisational innovations that are designed to ensure it can continue to meet customer requirements in future with innovative, environmentally sustainable and high-quality products, and thus safeguard the company’s long-term business success. Therefore, when developing Strategy 2030, “Drive innovation” was defined as one of five strategic directions. To this end, Vetropack continually monitors developments relating to the circular economy, digitalisation, automation, the climate targets for 2050 and the needs and requirements of customers. As part of its innovation strategy, Vetropack also encourages the development of innovations by suppliers, customers and international research groups, for example as part of the “International Partners in Glass Research” (IPGR) industry association.

The company’s CEO supports Vetropack’s innovation strategy as an integral component of the Group’s overall strategy. The CEO is assisted here by the Head of Engineering and Production, who focuses in particular on the development of process innovations in cooperation with suppliers. The corresponding policies and guidelines are managed by the Corporate Functions department. Cooperation with suppliers is crucial, as it allows Vetropack and its suppliers to identify ways to improve production operations and jointly develop innovative approaches for achieving such improvements. This collaborative effort focuses on the development of innovations for melting, moulding, inspection processes and products.

In 2020, Vetropack launched an innovation centre at its Pöchlarn site in Austria, where an innovation team is to be formed in 2021 and entrusted with developing new VIP Glass packaging, amongst other projects.

Important key figures for measuring progress on innovation are the innovation rate and customer satisfaction value. Strategic initiatives are also reviewed annually based on the market performance of the products involved and the CO2 emissions produced as a result of melting processes at the plants. Process innovation projects are evaluated on a monthly and annual basis using performance and quality indicators, such as the number of critical complaints received.