Austria's ALPLA to build plastics recycling plant in Romania

Packaging specialist ALPLA Group is investing in the construction of a PET bottle recycling plant at Târgu Mureș in Romania, as part of a joint venture with its partners. 

The plastic granulate recycled in the new plant will come from PET collected from household waste and will be used to manufacture new PET bottles.

By creating the planned PET Recycling Team Târgu Mureș joint venture, ALPLA and companies Ecohelp SRL and United Polymer Trading (UPT) from Switzerland are each investing equally in the installation of an extrusion line to recycle post-consumer PET bottles at the Romanian partner’s site.

Read more: Lego to develop bricks made from recycled plastic bottles

They aim to produce 15,000 tonnes of food-grade post-consumer recycled PET (rPET) each year. The rPET granulate will then be used to manufacture new preforms and bottles, with an intention to strengthen the local materials cycle within the central and south-eastern Europe region. Production is planned to start in mid-2022.

The three partners contribute different areas of expertise to the joint venture. While ALPLA acts as a recycling specialist and a preform and bottle manufacturer, Ecohelp supplies base material in the form of PET flakes that will go through an extrusion process to produce high-grade rPET granules.

UPT in turn co-owns the rPET Upcycling facility Cumapol Emmen in The Netherlands and specialises in trading plastics and recycled material.

The entire amount being invested in the plant and the associated building and infrastructure comes to roughly €7.5 million.

ALPLA Chairman Günther Lehner, who is responsible for developing the company’s Sustainability and Circular Economy departments, emphasised the significance of the investment. 

Read more: What to know about the EU's single-use plastics ban

"Our aim at ALPLA now and in the future is to establish a bottle-to-bottle cycle – including in regions in which the collection and recycling of waste still has potential for development. By participating in this joint venture, we are taking a strategically important and sustainable step in this direction."

Georg Lässer, Head of Corporate Recycling at ALPLA, added: "We are seeing consistent growing demand from our customers for recycled material, and this demand is worldwide and unbroken. This and our customers’ need to close local material cycles give us an opportunity to boost investment projects like these. With our two partners, we have brought together our different areas of expertise and are looking forward to a new form of collaboration."

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