rPET bottles pour out of recycling plants

Prominent manufacturers in the recycled PET (rPET) market see substantial gains in Asia, with a number of them opening recycling plants in Southeast Asia.

In Indonesia, PT Veolia Services Indonesia, in partnership with Danone- AQUA, is building the largest PET bottle to-bottle recycling and reprocessing factory in Pasuruan district, East Java.

Built on a 22,000-square-metre stretch, with a building area of 7,000 sq. metres, the factory is expected to start operations this year. Annual production is at 25,000 tonnes of rPET, in accordance with the applicable food safety standards in Indonesia. The factory will employ 80 local workers, and machinery that is capable of quickly separating the caps and labels.

The France-based waste management company in 2018 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Danone-AQUA for the construction of this recycling factory. This is part of Danone-AQUA’s #BijakBerplastik commitment to collect more plastic waste than it produces by 2025.

According to Veolia, the raw materials will be sourced through plastic waste collection actors in several cities in Indonesia.

Danone-AQUA has pioneered plastic recycling in Indonesia through the PEDULI programme as early as 1993. To date, 70% of its business is already circular. In 2018 AQUA launched Indonesia’s first water bottle made of 100% recycled plastic. It says that the partnership with Veolia Indonesia will not only help increase recycling efforts but also make sure that its innovative 100 % rPET packaging will get sufficient supply in the future.

In Thailand, ALPLA is expecting its high-quality circular plastic recycling plant to be operational by end of 2021. The Austria-based company whose full name is ALPLA-Werke Alwin Lehner GmbH & Co KG, is a leader in the development and production of plastic packaging solutions, and specialises in blow-molded bottles and caps, injection moulded parts, preforms and tubes.