New Joburg plant to recycle bottles into bottles

A state of the art bottle-to-bottle recycling plant is coming to Wadeville, Johannesburg to turn soft drink, bottled water and other forms of PET packing into bottles again.

Extrupet will be installing a state of the art Bottle-2-Bottle recycling plant furnished with Starlinger recycling technology, specially engineered to fulfill the expectations and standards needed for bottles for carbonated soft drink, bottled water and all other forms of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging.

The new facility will supply an additional 14000 tonnes of PET resin per annum to the PET packaging industry and will eventually divert an additional 22 000 MT of post-consumer PET bottles per annum from landfills, thus creating jobs and saving landfill space which is in line with the Waste Amendment Act’s objectives.

Zero waste to landfill by 2030

Extrupet have been at the forefront of plastic packaging recycling on the ground for close to fifteen years now, and share the vision of Plastics SA to achieve “zero waste to landfill by 2030”.

PhoenixPET has the capability to provide a level of quality assurance to meet the growing local and regional demand in the bottle and thermoforming industry (the food, beverage and packaging market) for environmentally friendly and sustainable packaging.

“PhoenixPET is to be viewed as a bench-mark for other recycled polymers as well as packaging mediums aspiring to attain a cradle-to-cradle solution for sustainable packaging”, says Joint Managing Director of Extrupet, Mr Chandru Wadhwani.

Reduced demand for virgin material

Convertors and brand owners can now strengthen their corporate image with a sustainable message in all their products. By using food grade recycled PET, the demand for virgin material is decreased, less energy is used and a huge reduction in net carbon emissions achieved. The integrity of the product would not change since PhoenixPET can achieve the same quality as virgin polymer making

This project’s success is attributed to Extrupet’s long standing relationship with PETCO, the industry body for recycling of PET bottles. PETCO, together with recycling partner Extrupet, have grown their collaboration by increasing PET recycling rates in South Africa, over the last decade. 49% of all post-consumer PET bottles are currently recycled, that’s over 1.5 billion bottles recycled in 2014. This rate is set to rise in 2015, with a target of 50% being chased. This will be a land mark event for the industry.

“2015 will be a milestone year for the PET industry” says Cheri Scholtz, CEO of PETCO “We look forward to Bottle-2-Bottle recycling coming on stream thus closing the manufacturing loop in the biggest sector in the market. Extrupet’s Bottle-2-Bottle plant is a 1st in PET recycling for the African continent- now that’s something to be proud of!” she added.