Evergreen, Retal partner on sustainable packaging

A circular economy is too big and too important for any one of us to achieve alone. The clear need for joined up thinking throughout the plastic packaging industry to support a circular economy must be driven by like-minded individuals, representing businesses that want to be sure they’re on the right side of history.
It’s not an easy task. The anachronistic reality of consumers wanting greater convenience from reduced packaging sits alongside responsible brands still wanting to increase volumes of sales while keeping their consumers happy. Combine that with a broader understanding of sustainable packaging options and the increasing legislation for what constitutes sustainable packaging, and you have an interesting challenge.
Thankfully, there are plenty of innovative players committed to grasping that challenge with both hands.  But the real magic happens when these innovative players join hands and work out how best to work together. Darius Janulionis, CEO of Retal PA, the North American facility for the multinational plastic packaging group RETAL, leads a team of dynamic experts in producing up to 100% rPET preforms for food and beverage brands across North America and the east coast of Canada.

The 150,000 sq ft facility in Donora, PA uses 100% renewable energy, produced 1.247bn preforms in 2022, and runs a less than 0.5% scrap margin. Its range of preforms are made for various global and local household names, especially those who appreciate the up to 100% rPET which is reliably available at the volumes they require. Janulionis explains how this guaranteed supply of sustainable raw materials is key to its rapid growth, with total production doubling since 2018. “We’re an ambitious team with the backing of global group, and we’re continually pushing ourselves and stretching the boundaries. We want to keep growing but without costing the earth. Our shared focus is to produce sustainable packaging in a sustainable way, for customers that demand responsible solutions.”

Progressive partners
To keep achieving this reliably and flexibly, Darius and his team rely on each other, and carefully selected partners that also share this focus. Evergreen, a leader in recycling and producing food grade rPET across the US, is crucial to Retal’s ability to offer a continuous supply of up to 100% rPET preforms, with its welcome balance of advanced recycling technology and progressive approach to diverting millions of pounds of recyclable materials from landfills, oceans and communities.

Marc Schins, VP of sales for Evergreen, appreciates that they must clearly ‘see a lot of the pieces of the puzzle’ to continually fulfil their mission of ‘supporting the circular economy by making landfills a thing of the past’. Originally founded in 1998 to provide a reliable supply of quality polyester resin to its PET strapping sister company Greenbridge, Evergreen today is in North America’s top three largest plastic (PET) recyclers and producers of rPET, with locations in Albany, NY, Clyde, OH, Riverside, CA, and Amherst in Nova Scotia, Canada, with expectations to be the market leader.
Producing 217 million pounds of rPET (almost 10 thousand tonnes) in 2022, Evergreen’s ultramodern facilities include solid-state polycondensation reactors capable of creating the high quality, food grade rPET demanded by the world’s leading global brands.

Schins explains, “We work hard to be able to make an immediate impact. We have a clear vision and we’re involved in every step; we can take plastic bales in and convert them to rPET pellets at all our facilities. It’s incredible, it only takes 8-12 hours for the total process. We want to be known as a provider of an engineered product rather than just a mechanical recycler. We’re not reliant on the flake market, it’s very much bottle to bottle circularity.”
The Evergreen team works directly with bottle processors such as Retal, who currently take a large volume of rPET from them to meet the stringent requirements of its global beverage brand customers. Schins continues, “We all have a part to play in creating, supporting and promoting the circular economy. Working with bottle processes is my day to day, but the real impact comes from the brands. They are the face of the customer and can direct who the processors use; by specifying sustainable and responsible partners, we can make huge steps forward in the circular economy.”

Those huge steps forward must be taken side by side, with processors, raw material providers and brands understanding what they each need to contribute. Janulionus agrees, “Once we made the decision to commit to 100% rPET, using 100% renewable energy, our sustainable production turned on like a switch. We’ve always pushed ourselves, and this feels like the right thing to do, for our business, our customers, and the environment. The transition happened in high season, so there were some hurdles, but we dealt with the challenges by communicating honestly with Evergreen, and our supply chain manager Tom Williams was especially influential in streamlining the process. We jumped into rPET, with the encouragement of our major brand customers, and we knew we’d make it work. And it has!”

Tom Williams adds that the streamlining was only possible thanks to ‘finding all your pieces and aligning them into harmony…. and then realigning them each week when the situation changes!’ He says, “We’ve had many calls and meetings with Evergreen, including visiting their amazing facilities to see how it all happens. In peak season we were receiving four or five hopper loads a day to maintain our operations. We used outlook with excel schedule sheets to align from our ERP generated POs. Our team aligned ourselves by adding two more material handlers this year to provide a daily 12-hour window to ensure we could receive these shipments and maintain production. We played musical silos a few times when timing on raw materials wasn’t ideal, but together with the Evergreen logistics team, we know that communication is key to keeping this monster rolling forward.”
‘Rolling forward’ means it doesn’t stop there. The importance of a reliable, food grade supply of rPET across North America drives Retal PA and Evergreen. Schins concludes, “We’re constantly looking at ways to be more efficient. We have more capacity to come online in 2024 and we have room to expand. We’re ready to accept truckloads of recyclable products, and we have bottle processing partners like Retal ready to create responsible packaging at reliable quality and volume.”

With companies like Evergreen and Retal already showing that their elements of the circular economy are realistic and achievable, the crucial influence of brands can only happen when consumers truly understand the major impact that choosing rPET has for the food and beverage industry. While currently the use of rPET and its characteristic very-slightly-grey tinge is some that is either hidden or apologised for, while still promoted on the label, now is the time for this small colour variation to be promoted as a badge of honour. If the whole of the plastic packaging value chain can collectively share the message that choosing rPET – and committing to recycling rPET over and over again – is a major change that we all need to join hands to make happen, then the consumers will know that they’re part of something bigger than them, which, ultimately, is what we all crave.