European waste processing company Reiling Kunststoff Recycling GmbH is extending its capacity with the construction of a 60,000tpa PET bottle recycling plant at Burgbernheim in southern Germany.
The family-owned firm, based in Marienfeld, central Germany, announced it will invest nearly €13m to develop the new industrial site which will also include a logistics base for solar panels recycling. This will create an extra 40 jobs, the firm said.
Reiling, which collects and recycles a range of waste materials such as glass, paper, plastics and wood, has several plants across Germany as well as others in Denmark, Sweden and Poland.
A formal groundbreaking ceremony for the Burgbernheim development took place at the site in Bavaria at the end of last month.
Reiling's latest project is set to take shape in two distinct stages with the initial construction phase including a trans-shipment centre with a storage area, truck scale, workshop and administration building.
This operation is expected to “optimise logistics for Reiling's existing business, according to the company.
A second development step on the new site will see construction of the PET bottle recycling operation and the planned solar panels recycling logistics base.
Reiling has embarked on the investment because it foresees the need for increased recycling capacity to deal with more waste PET packaging being collected across Europe soon.
“Due to the new EU packaging directive, trade associations such as Plastics Recyclers Europe expect an additional volume of collected bottle waste of around 500,000 tonnes annually in Europe,” the firm pointed out.
Reiling aims to play an important part in ensuring the extra bottle waste is reused rather than just being burned, it added.
It was in 2007 that Reiling inaugurated its PET plastics processing line at the Marienfeld site near Gütersloh. Last year saw the construction of a new production hall for processing plastics recycling by-products at its plant in Hamm-Uentrop, Germany.
Reiling processes photovoltaic modules and polyvinyl butyral (PVB) film from solar panels at its German sites at Osterweddingen in eastern Germany and at Marienfeld.