CCEP Ventures, the investment arm of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) has announced that it is making a further investment in recycling start-up CuRe Technology, in Emmen, Netherlands.
CCEP, the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler, aims to eliminate virgin oil-based plastic from its bottles and is exploring different routes to achieve that goal. One promising technology is that of CuRe Technology, which led CCEP in 2020 to make an initial investment in the company. At that time, this was designed to enable the acceleration of the development of CuRe Technology's proprietary ‘polyester rejuvenation’ technology by providing support for its R&D roadmap and pilot plant.
CuReTechnology was created and led by a consortium of recycling innovators and experts led by the Morssinkhof Group and the Cumapol/DuFor Group, with strategic partners Niaga and NHL Stenden University of Applied Science. It has developed a partial depolymerisation process, focused on shortening the polymer chains just enough to allow removal of many impurities; a process that looks to be less energy intensive than full depolymerisation. CuRe Technology’s recycling process creates high-quality rPET with a carbon footprint that is approximately 65% lower than virgin PET, (based on CuRe’s life cycle assessment, carbon footprint reductions compared to virgin: 2022 figure)
Initially, CuRe Technologies has applied the technology to transform opaque and difficult to recycle food grade PET to high quality recycled PET that is suitable for food and drink packaging applications in one continuous process on a single site.
The present investment from CCEP will enable the company to take the technology from pilot plant to commercial readiness. An new plant is planned that is set to start production in 2025.
CCEP will have access to CuRe Technology’s rPET for use in its bottles in Europe, affording the bottler the potential to access the rPET volume it will need to achieve its 100% rPET ambition for PET bottles.