The ALPLA Group, a leader in plastic packaging and recycling solutions, continues its efforts to achieve its sustainability objectives by investing in the construction of a recycling plant in Târgu Mureș. The company will invest approximately 50 million euro each year in order to expand recycling activities by 2025.
“Our goal is to establish a complete life cycle of packaging – from bottle (PET) to bottle- especially in regions where waste collection and recycling has potential for development. Our partnership in this joint venture is a strategic and important step in this direction,” says ALPLA President Günther Lehner, responsible for the development of the Sustainability and Circular Economy departments.
In order to develop the factory, ALPLA, together with Ecohelp SRL and United Polymer Trading AG (Switzerland) is launching joint PET recycling operations in Romania, investing in the installation of an extrusion line for the recycling of plastic containers. Thus, the granules from the recycling process will be used for the manufacture of new preforms and containers, in order to strengthen the cycle of materials from the region of Central and South-Eastern Europe.
The target set by the three companies is the annual production of 15,000 tons of post-consumer recycled PET, food grade (rPET).
Good sustainability practices and new directives require the market to make significant improvements, both in terms of packaging production and the collection process. There is also a growing consumer interest in recycled materials.
“We are seeing an increasing demand from our customers for recycled materials. The need and desire of our customers to recycle gives us the opportunity to stimulate investment projects,” says Georg Lässer, head of the corporate recycling department ALPLA
While ALPLA acts as a recycling specialist and as a manufacturer of preforms and containers, Ecohelp provides basic material in the form of PET flakes that will go through an extrusion process to produce high quality rPET granules. UPT is the owner of the rPET Cumapol Emmen recycling plant in the Netherlands and specializes in the trade in plastics and recycled materials.
“We are an innovative company, with a strong desire for sustainability, which constantly consolidates and develops its services by implementing solutions and facilities that increase the quality of the environment. Our vision is to use natural resources in an efficient and sustainable way with the help of renewable energy and sustainable materials, recycled properly, and reducing pollution is one of our goals. The vast expertise we have in this field, the technical capabilities and the rich experience of the partners with whom we created this joint venture contribute to reducing the degree of pollution,” says Cristina Bogdan, Sustainability Manager.
The total amount invested in the factory and related infrastructure amounts to about 7.5 million euro, and the expansion of the factory creates 15 new jobs.
“Through this investment, we bring our recycling expertise to our customers in the region, allowing us to operate in the market even closer,” said Rainer Widmar, EEC Regional Director at ALPLA.
At the beginning of 2021, the ALPLA Group announced that it will invest approximately 50 million euro each year in the continuous expansion of its recycling activities until 2025. The company also intends to globalize its activities in the field of high quality recycling. In total, the group recycles approximately 130,000 tonnes of PET and 60,000 tonnes of PE annually.