Austrian plastic packaging and recycling specialist Alpla Group has announced that it is investing more than €5m in a new extrusion system at its site in Anagni, in central Italy. The site, one of Alpla Group’s most important preform production plants, currently processes around 50,000 tonnes of PET a year, of which only a tiny part is recycled material.
In the future, however, this will change: Alpla is now installing a new extrusion system for the production of and additional 15,000 tonnes of rPET a year at this site
According to Anagni plant manager Fabio Mazzarella, the company will purchase PET flakes made from used household packaging from local recyclers and process these into food-grade rPET, which will be used to produce preforms based on rPET.
While current demand for recycled material is easily manageable, with the upcoming new targets and legislation, demand will expand. “But with this measure, we are ensuring that we can offer our customers optimum support with realising new specifications and targets in the long term too and that we can offer them top-quality recycled materials,” emphasised Georg Lässer, head of Corporate Recycling at Alpla.
The project involves an investment of over €5 million and will create 10 jobs, bringing the number of employees at the site to, in total,101.
The new plant is scheduled to go into operation in the second half of 2021.