The plastic park will house two plastics recycling facilities, a materials recycling facility, a polymer laminate recycling facility, a hydrogen refuelling station, and others
Illustration of the Protos plastic park proposed by Peel NRE. (Credit: Peel L&P (UK) Limited)
Peel NRE has submitted plans for a proposed plastic park to be built in the UK, with an investment of £165m, aimed at handling a share of the country’s 4.9 million tonnes of annual plastic waste.
The site will be developed at Protos, the company’s strategic resource and energy hub located near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.
The Protos plastic park is expected to bring together advanced processing and treatment technologies to extract the maximum value from plastic waste, said the company, which is a part of UK-based regeneration business Peel L&P.
It is planned to house a materials recycling facility, two plastics recycling facilities, a polymer laminate recycling facility, and a hydrogen refuelling station among others.
According to Peel NRE, two of the facilities at the park have already been granted planning permission. One of them will be a first of its kind facility in the UK that will convert waste plastic into hydrogen using the technology of Powerhouse Energy, an engineering company.
The other facility will be a polyethylene triterephthalate (PET) recycling plant for food and beverage packaging products. The plant will recycle the waste plastic bottles and others so that they can be used for making new packaging products.
Peel NRE is currently seeking approval for planning for additional facilities that would allow for the production of up to 367,500 tonnes of mixed recycled plastics and plastics. The facilities are expected to generate 147 new jobs.
The company said that nearly 300 people participated in a public consultation that led to the planning application.
Peel NRE development director Richard Barker said: “As our pre-application consultation showed, the issue of plastic waste is high up the agenda. By clustering various treatment technologies together in one place, we can maximise the amount of plastic that can be recycled and create a circular economy in the North West.
“Over time, the flow of materials between the different facilities means vehicle movements will reduce and we will use any plastic that can’t be recycled to create hydrogen which can be used as a clean fuel for HGV’s, buses and cars.”
Peel NRE said that Cheshire West and Chester Council will now consider its application, with a decision expected to be made early next year.