Joint PET recycling activities in Romania

ALPLA Group, the inter­na­tion­al­ly active spe­cial­ist for pack­ag­ing solu­tions and recy­cling, is invest­ing in the con­struc­tion of a recy­cling plant in Tar­gu Mures, Roma­nia, togeth­er with part­ners as part of a joint ven­ture. The plas­tic gran­u­late recy­cled there in the future will come from PET bot­tles from house­hold col­lec­tion and will be used to pro­duce new PET bottles.

With the planned estab­lish­ment of the joint ven­ture “PET Recy­cling Team Tar­gu Mures”, the com­pa­ny and the com­pa­nies Eco­help SRL (Roma­nia) and Unit­ed Poly­mer Trad­ing AG (Switzer­land) are invest­ing equal­ly in the instal­la­tion of an extru­sion line for the recy­cling of post-con­sumer PET bot­tles at the site of the Roman­ian part­ner. The aim is to pro­duce 15,000 met­ric tons of food-grade post-con­sumer recy­cled PET (rPET) per year. The rPET gran­ules will then be used to pro­duce new pre­forms and bot­tles and will help strength­en the local mate­r­i­al cycle with­in the Cen­tral and South­east­ern Europe region.

Three partners, different competencies

The three part­ners bring dif­fer­ent com­pe­ten­cies to the joint ven­ture. While ALPLA acts as a recy­cling spe­cial­ist as well as a pre­form and bot­tle pro­duc­er, Eco­help pro­vides the start­ing mate­r­i­al in the form of PET flakes, from which high-qual­i­ty rPET gran­u­late is then obtained in an extru­sion process. UPT, in turn, is co-own­er of the Cumapol Emmen rPET upcy­cling plant in the Nether­lands and spe­cial­izes in trad­ing in plas­tics and recy­cled mate­ri­als. The total vol­ume of the invest­ment in the plant as well as in the asso­ci­at­ed build­ings and infra­struc­ture amounts to around 7.5 mil­lion euros. In the course of the plant expan­sion, 15 new jobs will be cre­at­ed at the Tar­gu Mures site.

Promoting the local circular economy

ALPLA Chair­man Gün­ther Lehn­er, who is respon­si­ble for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and cir­cu­lar econ­o­my divi­sions, empha­sizes the impor­tance of the invest­ment: “Our goal at ALPLA is and remains the bot­tle-to-bot­tle cycle — even in regions where the col­lec­tion and recy­cling of plas­tic waste still has devel­op­ment poten­tial. With this joint ven­ture, we are tak­ing a strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant and sus­tain­able step in this direction.”

Georg Läss­er, Head of Cor­po­rate Recy­cling at ALPLA, adds, “We con­tin­ue to see a grow­ing demand for recy­cled mate­ri­als from our cus­tomers, world­wide. This unbro­ken demand and the need of cus­tomers to close local mate­r­i­al cycles gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ini­ti­ate invest­ment projects of this kind. With the two part­ners, we have bun­dled dif­fer­ent com­pe­ten­cies and look for­ward to this new form of cooperation.”

“With this invest­ment, we bring our recy­cling exper­tise to our cus­tomers in this region and can thus act even clos­er to the market.”

- Rain­er Wid­mar, Region­al Man­ag­er CEE

The joint ven­ture was signed by the par­ties on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2021, sub­ject to com­pe­ti­tion approvals. Pro­duc­tion is sched­uled to start in mid-2022. The con­tract­ing par­ties have agreed not to dis­close fur­ther details.

Expansion and internationalization of recycling activities

At the begin­ning of 2021, the ALPLA Group announced that it would invest an aver­age of 50 mil­lion euros per year in the fur­ther expan­sion of its recy­cling activ­i­ties until 2025. The main plan is to inter­na­tion­al­ize the mea­sures for high-qual­i­ty recy­clates in order to close mate­r­i­al cycles in as many regions as pos­si­ble. In total, the annu­al capac­i­ty of the ALPLA recy­cling com­pa­nies as well as joint ven­tures and coop­er­a­tions amounts to around 130,000 tons for PET and 60,000 tons for PE.