Page 10 - Packaging News Magazine Sep-Oct 2021

10 NEWS |
www.packagingnews.com.au | September-October 2021
rPET capacity boost via industry partnership
The new facility is expected give around 1 billion PET bottles a year a second life as new rPET packaging.
circular economy. This partner- ship shows the value of a solution that works for industry and consumers,” Dayal said.
Under the MOU, the parties intend to come together to pro- vide an industry model for recy- cling solutions in Australia. This will include the new facility, as well as the PET recycling facility currently being built through Circular Plastics Australia (PET) in Albury-Wodonga.
The cross-industry solution combines the complementary expertise of each participant.
Cleanaway will provide available PET through its col- lection and sorting network; Pact will provide technical and packaging expertise and will run the plant; and CCEP, Asahi and Pact will buy the rPET resin from the facility to use in their respective products.
“This project supports Cleanaway’s Footprint 2025 by ensuring we have the right infrastructure in place to cre- ate a domestic circular econ- omy,” explained Brendan Gill, Cleanaway’s chief operating officer.
Gill said the new PET plastic pelletising facility will be a “huge win for the environment”
PACT Group, Cleanaway, Asahi Beverages and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for a joint venture to build and operate a new PET recycling facility.
A decision on the plant’s loca- tion is anticipated in the coming months and construction is expected to be completed by 2023.
The proposed facility, to be run by Pact Group when it is fully operational, is anticipated to pro- vide a massive boost to Australian
recycling by processing raw plas- tic material collected via con- tainer deposit schemes (CDS) and kerbside recycling.
The recycling plant is expected to process the equiva- lent of around one billion bot- tles each year to produce over 20,000 tonnes of new recycled PET (rPET) bottles and food packaging, through the use of state-of-the-art sorting, wash- ing, decontamination and extrusion technology.
This project, along with other
recently announced JV partner- ships that Pact has entered, aligns with the company’s strat- egy to lead the local circular economy through reuse, recy- cling and packaging solutions. Pact Group CEO and managing director Sanjay Dayal said, “We are delighted to be able to bring a scaled cross-industry solution that solves for the local produc- tion of recycled resin.
“We are proud to have CCEP, Asahi Beverages and Cleanaway as partners creating a local
Impact installs tube line mid-pandemic
SYDNEY-BASED tube manufac- turer, Impact International, has installed and commissioned a new five-layer extrusion line from Breyer Extrusion, despite restrictions imposed by the cur- rent Covid-19 lockdown.
Managing director Aleks Lajovic said, “The new five- layer line allows us to increase our production capacity of our award-winning range of sus- tainable tubes.
“We can use our traditional materials, as well as our grades of sugar cane plastic and
recycled plastic in the new line,” he explained. “The sepa- rate layers allow us to add in recycled plastic and guarantee that the recycled material does not come into contact with the contents of the tube.”
Commenting on the chal- lenges faced during the instal- lation process, Lajovic said it
Aleks Lajovic, MD Impact International, alongside the new Breyer five-layer extrusion line installed at the company’s Smithfield facility.
was “very tough”, as normally, a technician would arrive to assist and direct the team when the line is being installed and commissioned.
“A technician would typically stay with us for two weeks. In the current Covid climate, this could not happen, so we had a lot of Zoom meetings, WhatsApp messages and emails. I am proud of how the installation went; our team did an amazing job.”
Lajovic said it was a very dif- ficult decision to make a large investment while in the midst