The new plant will recycle PET collected from household waste to produce sustainable plastic granulate for the manufacturing of new PET bottles
Alpla, Ecohelp and UPT have announced construction of a new recycling plant in Romania. (Credit: ALPLA Group)
Alpla Group, along with its partners Ecohelp and United Polymer Trading (UPT), has announced the construction of a new recycling facility in Romania.
Located in Targu Mures, the new plant will recycle PET collected from household waste to produce sustainable plastic granulate for the manufacturing of new PET bottles.
Austria-based Alpla, Romania-based Ecohelp and Switzerland-based UPT have created a new PET Recycling Team Targu Mures joint venture (JV) to invest equally in the installation of an extrusion line for the recycling of post-consumer PET bottles at the Romanian partner’s site.
The partnership intends to manufacture 15,000 tonnes of food-grade post-consumer recycled PET (rPET) per annum.
Later, the rPET granulate will be used for the manufacturing of new preforms and bottles. The initiative will help to strengthen the local materials cycle within the Central and South-Eastern Europe region.
As part of the JV, Alpla serves as a recycling specialist and a preform and bottle manufacturer, Ecohelp provides base material in the form of PET flakes that will undergo an extrusion process to produce rPET granules.
UPT, which co-owns the rPET Upcycling facility Cumapol Emmen in the Netherlands, has expertise in trading plastics and recycled material.
Alpla chairman Günther Lehner said: “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.”
The companies will invest up to €7.5m to develop the new plant, as well as the associated building and infrastructure. The plant is expected to generate 15 new jobs at the site in Targu Mures.
Last month, Alpla agreed to acquire packaging manufacturer Wolf Plastics Group to expand its presence in Central and South-Eastern Europe.