UK-headquartered Vanden Recycling has established an office in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to extend its recycling services to the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
Operating under the name Vanden Recycling FZCO, the office will be headed by the newly-appointed business development manager Beril Yesilimak.
The unit will be working with local manufacturers, waste management companies and authorities to develop the recycling infrastructure in the region, a company CEO Damien van Leuven told PNE in a written statement.
Vanden intends to build recycling capacity in the region within two years, according to van Leuven.
“We will be facilitating the global trade of polymers if necessary, as well as arranging plastic to be taken back our UK plastic recycling facility to be reprocessed into regrinds or flakes when required,” he noted.
Vanden Recycling has a reprocessing facility in Cambridgeshire, where it processes 30 tonnes of plastic a day.
The UK plant has four dedicated production lines handling high volume, single streams of plastic including ABS, PA, PC, PE, PET, PP, PS and PVC.
In a press release, Vanden said the current recycling rate in the GCC region stood at less than 10%, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE reportedly ranking among the world’s largest waste producers.
Vanden can see potential for growth in the market for its services, as the region pushes an agenda to reach improved diversion rates as early as 2021.
“In order to achieve these goals, there is an urgent need for sustainable recovery systems and a structured approach to plastics recycling,” the company statement noted.
Beril Yesilirmak expects Vanden’s “extensive knowledge of polymers, markets and processes” would help the region achieve its targets.
Opportunities, she concluded, are “obvious” in the UAE and GCC, with the low recycling rates and high waste generation.