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.
