The capacity of an rPET plant in Poland will rise from 15,000 to 30,000 tonnes, its owner ALPLA has announced.
A new rPET extrusion system will be going into operation this month at the recycling plant PET Recycling Team in Radomsko, Poland.
After signing a New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, an initiative of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, ALPLA agreed to invest €50 million (£44 million) in expanding its recycling activities by 2025. This expansion of the food-grade PET recycling plant is part of this, as is its construction of a recycling plant in Thailand.
ALPLA head of recycling Georg Lässer said: “As a result [of the investment], we are doubling the capacity for high-quality rPET, which can then be fed back into the bottle cycle.
“Downcycling (eg the use of flakes to produce film or their deployment in the textile industry) will largely be avoided. Instead, 30,000 tonnes of food grade rPET will now be used solely to produce new packaging units for European customers in keeping with the bottle-to-bottle principle.
“What’s more, all the input material – known as ‘post-consumer material’ – also comes from Europe, ie Poland and neighbouring countries.”
ALPLA is based in Austria.
