MOSCOW (MRC) -- The ALPLA Group is investing more than EUR5m in an extrusion system for food-grade recycled PET made of used PET bottles at its site in Anagni, Italy, said Recyclingtoday.
Anagni is home to one of the ALPLA Group’s most important preform production plants. The plant, which currently has a workforce of 91, processes around 50,000 tonnes of PET a year, of which only a very small proportion is recycled material as of today. A substantial portion of the volume required is henceforth to be supplied in the form of recycled material.
ALPLA is thus installing an extrusion system for 15,000 tonnes of rPET a year at the existing business premises. The investment sum for construction of the building needed and for the system totals more than five million euros. It is scheduled to go into operation in the second half of 2021. Ten new jobs will be created.
Plant Manager Fabio Mazzarella said: “We will buy in PET flakes made from used household packaging from local recyclers, process them into food-grade rPET and then use this at the site for preforms."
Georg Lasser, Head of Corporate Recycling at ALPLA, added: “We want to promote the bottle-to-bottle cycle and avoid downcycling. In addition, we would like to boost local recycling solutions in a region that does not have the necessary infrastructure for the bottle loop up to now’ the recycling expert explains. The demand for recycled material can currently be managed well. ‘But with this measure, we are ensuring that we can offer our customers optimum support with realising new specifications and targets in the long term too and that we can offer them top-quality recycled materials."
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's PET consumption reached 61,110 tonnes in November 2020, up by 1% year on year. Overall PET consumption in Russia reached 648,110 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2020 , down by 18% year on year.
MRC