Biffa, a sustainable waste company in the UK has extended its longstanding partnership with Nampak Plastics Europe, a manufacturer and packaging supplier to the UK dairy sector of high density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles.
Biffa first partnered with Nampak in 2008 through the UK’s Dairy Roadmap, a scheme designed to unite the dairy industry’s partners to produce fully recyclable plastic milk bottles. At that time, Nampak Plastics Europe was owned by South Africa-based packaging manufacturer Nampak Limited. In December 2019, Nampak sold its European plastics business to Belcave Ltd.
Under the present extended agreement, Biffa will supply food-grade recycled HDPE to Nampak for use in manufacturing plastic bottles. The resin will be sourced from Biffa’s Redcar facility, which was the world’s first commercial recycled food-grade HDPE production plant when it opened in 2008
Biffa has pioneered the development of closed-loop plastic recycling in the UK in recent years. The company has reprocessed over three billion HPDE milk bottles over the last decade and claims that 85% of milk bottles in the UK now contain Biffa material.
The Group has committed to quadrupling its plastics recycling capacity by 2030 and recently announced the opening of the first phase of a new £27.5m (€30.5m) state of the art rPET recycling facility in Seaham, capable of processing the equivalent of 1.3bn plastic bottles each year. Biffa has also confirmed a further £7m (€7.76m) investment in nearby Washington in a plant to process plastic pots, tubs and trays.