Bangkok-headquartered Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited, the world’s largest producer of recycled PET for beverage bottles, has acquired an 85% equity stake in Czech Republic-based PET plastic recycler, UCY Polymers CZ s.r.o., the company announced today. The deal will provide a considerable boost to the country and Europe’s plastic collection and recycling ambitions.
More specifically, it will enable IVL, who entered the recycling business in 2011, to recycle about 1.12 billion additional post-consumer PET bottles in the Czech Republic every year by 2025 and push the total number of bottles recycled by UCY across the Czech Republic, Germany and Central Europe up to 1.6 billion bottles per year.
“Expanding our capacity by 2025 means an extra 896 million more bottles will be recycled in our facilities compared with today,” said Maximilian Josef Söllner, CEO, UCY.
The Czech recycler is a strategic fit for IVL, giving IVL better control over the supply chain, and hence over the quality and supply of rPET from the production stage, as the company expands its rPET footprint in Europe and across the world to secure feedstock for rPET products.
UCY can produce 40,000 tonnes of recycled PET flake per year. IVL will develop UCY to serve the increasing demand for recycled PET in Europe, and strengthen the recycling ecosystem in the Czech Republic, commented Yash Lohia, ESG Council chairman at Indorama Ventures
The transaction is in line with IVL’s USD1.5 billion global investment programme aimed at expanding recycling facilities and sustainable production, including increasing its recycling capacity to 750,000 tons per year by 2025, whether through backward integration or otherwise.
“As part of our commitment to sustainability and the circular economy, we are building the recycling infrastructure needed to divert PET waste from the environment. By recycling post-consumer PET bottles into new bottles, we give waste an economic value,” said D K Agarwal, CEO and CFO at Indorama Ventures.
UCY will work with IVL’s existing PET flake production facilities in the region. These provide the washed and shredded post-consumer bottles as PET flake feedstock to produce recycled PET resin that is suitable for food contact use. PET is fully recyclable and the most collected and recycled plastic packaging in Europe.