Rigid PVC processor TeraPlast has launched a new subsidiary business aimed at spearheading vinyl plastic waste recycling in Romania.
Only last year, the old established Romanian building products and materials firm invested €3.5m to install a 12,000tpa vinyl pipe, panels and profiles recycling plant for post-consumer and industrial waste.
Now, the Bistrita, Romania-based group has announced a decision to spin off the waste collection, sorting and recycling operation as a separate business, TeraPlast Recycling. Its aim, it said, is to promote PVC recycling in Romania which lags behind other EU countries in recovering plastics waste.
TeraPlast’s move into recycling is also important to the group’s moulding business, not least because it is a significant regular consumer itself of recycled PVC. Today, it said, it has become Romania’s leading vinyl waste recycler and ranked among Europe’s top 10 such companies.
In the past eight months, its recycling lines processed an average of 650 tonnes of rigid PVC per month, with 46% of the waste coming from Romania. The remaining raw material originated in EU states including Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands.
“We are promoting the importance of rigid PVC recycling, both post-industrial and post-consumer, and we would like our initiative to inspire the Romanian business environment,” explained board chairman Dorel Goia.
He claimed that 20% of all rigid PVC waste across Europe is being recycled although the European market for recycled vinyl reached 480,000 tonnes last year.
“TeraPlast Recycling is a solution to one of Europe’s biggest concerns and an initiative through which Romania (can) make important progress in this field,” Goia suggested.
He stressed his firm would prefer to process national PVC waste than have “pay €2,000” to transport 20 tonnes of the raw material all the way from the Netherlands.
TeraPlast installed the recycling plant last year after completing a two-year study of the international market and current technology. The move is in line with trends in the plastics industry worldwide and will make the company more “accountable to Romanian society”, the firm said.
The processor hopes its PVC recycling initiative will prompt the Romanian government to make it mandatory for waste collection contractors to sell on vinyl waste rather than burying it in landfill.
TeraPlast is a supplier of plastics and metal components to the construction and infrastructure sectors. Its products range from PVC compounds, vinyl pipe and window profiles to metal roof tiles and polyurethane steel sandwich panels.
The company, which is quoted on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, is also a rotational moulder of a variety of polyethylene rainwater storage and wastewater treatment tanks.
TeraPlast dipped into the red in the face of fierce competition with a loss of €220,000 in the first quarter of 2018, although group turnover almost doubled to €28.3m after a string of acquisitions during the period.
Despite an anticipated “volatile” 2018, TeraPlast has reported a 24% rise in net profit to €4.9m for the full year.