Page 13 - Packaging News Magazine Mar-Apr 2021

March-April 2021 | www.packagingnews.com.au | SUSTAINABILITY
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such as a produce crate pooling plat- form – and here Pact has to date replaced over 150 million single-use corrugated boxes with five million reusable plastic crates. It’s also kick- ing sustainability goals in its garment hanger business, which reuses enough hangers annually to circle the earth more than three times.
“We are also using recycled content in major infrastructure projects such as freeway noise walls that play a sig- nificant role in the Circular Economy as a home – or sink – for the plastics we recycle,” Dayal continues.
BUILDING LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE
At the 2020 National Plastics Summit, Pact announced its bold plans to lead the circular economy through a $500 million investment programme with government and like-minded partners.
“Pact is already the largest plastics recycler in Australasia and also one of the region’s biggest user of recycled materials – but we have ambitions to go much further,” Dayal says.
“Our target is 30 per cent recycled content across our portfolio, which means we will need more than 60,000 tonnes of recycling capacity by 2025, and we have many projects in the pipe- line that we believe will enable us to significantly exceed this capacity.”
In the week of our interview, Pact Group had joined its partners Cleanaway Waste Management and Asahi Beverages to turn the sod on Australia’s biggest PET recycling joint venture, called Circular Plastics Australia, now under construction in Albury-Wodonga.
When completed, this $45 million facility will be the largest end-to-end PET recycling plant in Australia with the capacity to recycle one billion 600ml PET plastic bottles and produce more than 20,000 tonnes of new recy- cled PET bottles and food packaging. It will increase locally sourced and recycled PET produced in Australia by two thirds – from around 30,000 tonnes currently to over 50,000 tonnes.
In the same week, in Western Australia, another project being explored by Pact and Cleanaway attracted a $9.5 million funding grant from the Recycling Modernisation Fund and the WA government.
“If approved by all parties, the funding will support the construc- tion of a world class plastics recy- cling plant in WA to process locally collected HDPE, PET, LDPE and PP into food grade polymers for reuse in plastic packaging,” Dayal says.
The proposed plant in WA will see over 17,000 tonnes of kerbside plastic
MAIN: Big picture circularity: The cladding on Melbourne’s skyrail project contains 75 per cent recycled content from milk bottles.
ABOVE: Pact is the largest rigid plastics manufacturer in Australasia.
PACT GROUP AT A GLANCE
■ $1.8bn turnover
■ 110 operating sites
■ 15 countries
■ 6000 employees
■ 7000 customers
waste processed into nearly 14,000 tons of resin and polymer flake, which will be used to make packag- ing for food, household, and indus- trial products.
STRATEGIC ACQUISITION
In January this year, Pact completed the acquisition of Flight Plastics, a leading provider of packaging for the fresh food segment and New Zealand’s only packaging manufacturer with integrated rPET recycling capability.
“The ANZ fresh food segment is estimated to be a $600 million mar- ket,” says Dayal. “In this segment there is increasing demand for sus- tainable packaging. Flight’s inte- grated recycling and manufacturing capability, and well-established cus- tomer relationships, will signifi- cantly enhance Pact’s competitive position in this attractive segment.”
The acquisition will give Pact access to more than 5000 tonnes per annum of recycled PET for use in food grade packaging in the ANZ region. Dayal says this “significantly pro- gresses Pact’s strategy to expand the group’s recycling capability through strategic investment”.