Bangkok--24 Oct--Indorama Ventures
Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL), a world-class chemicals company, showcased its state-of-the-art plastic recycling factory in Nakhon Pathom. The factory, which employs European technology, recycles post-consumer plastic PET bottles into recycled PET (rPET) plastic pellets, has been operating for 5 years. In 2018 alone, the factory recycled a total of 1.65 billion PET bottles which helped reduce Thailand's crude oil consumption by 530,000 barrels and cut down carbon emission as much as 118 million kilograms. The company is also working on chemical recycling, in Europe and the United States.
Mr. Richard Jones, Senior Vice President and Head of Sustainability at Indorama Venture PCL said, "As the world's leading PET producer, we entered the recycling business in 2011 by acquiring Wellman International – a European PET recycler and a leader in short synthetic polyester fiber as well as rPET – in order to accept the challenge of promoting the circular economy. At the moment, we operate 11 recycling facilities around the world. They are located in the Netherlands, Ireland, France, the United States, Mexico as well as Thailand. We built our fully-integrated polyester and PET recycling factory – the first ever in Thailand – in 2014 and it was the first recycling factory in Thailand employing European technology. The factory is located in Nakhon Pathom and operated by one of IVL's subsidiaries – Indorama Polyester Industries."
"Our facilities in Nakhon Pathom covers an area of 90 rai (14.4 hectares). They transformed post-consumer PET bottles into recycled PET resins and fibers (rPET). The annual capacity is 120,000 tons of polyester fibers and 29,000 tons of rPET. We serve customers from a wide range of industries, for example, apparel, fabrics, fibers and industrial products. We utilize Wellman International's European technology, which is the world's leading recycling technology along with technologies of Gneuss and Buhler from Germany. These are very advanced, clean and safe technologies that are recognized global standards in line with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USDA) and the FCSS 22000 standard for food processing and the European Commission's regulations. We adopt very stringent quality control and assurance policies to ensure maximum safety to our consumers, which is our top priority," said Mr. Anivesh Tewari, Plant Head of Indorama Polyester Industries
"Every day, over 100 tons of used PET bottles, which are already compressed in huge bales and inspected quality, are processed at this factory. Old plastic bottles are sorted, stripped off of any foreign materials, cleaned several times to remove any contamination and made into small chips. These chips are then heated to 285 - 300 degrees Celsius and melted. The result is ultra-high quality rPET pellets that are very well-regarded by the international community. This allows us to export our rPET for drink container applications to multiple countries including the United Kingdom and Australia."
"To generate maximum value for used materials and for the interest of the community and environment, our recycling process at IVL has been consistently improved to enable processing of materials other than PET as well, for example, HDPE bottle caps and PP (Polypropylene) labels. Such materials will be separated and processed differently. As for PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) labels, which are currently passed on to another recycler for processing, we are working on a method to recycle them too. Additionally, treated water within our factory is 80% reusable," Mr. Tewari added.
Currently, Indorama Ventures' customers across the globe are consistently demanding that more and more packaging materials are produced from recycled plastics due to awareness of rising plastic consumption. There has been a global demand to promote the use of recycled plastic packaging. For example, Japan and the European Union with 28 countries, permit the use of plastic food packaging materials made from recycled plastic. This proves that recycled plastic pellets are of a high standard and safe for such use. Germany has a plastic bottle recycling rate of 94%, the highest amongst the EU member states. In Asia, Japan is at the top of the list at 83%.
The company has set a goal of recycling 750,000 tons of PET by 2025. This is in line with the target set by the European Commission to increase the share rPET usage to 25% of all plastic pellets used in the production of food and drink containers by 2025. Each year, just one single factory of Indorama Ventures in Nakhon Pathom is capable of recycling as many as 1.65 billion PET bottles. It helps Thailand reduce crude oil consumption by 531,269 barrels, and CO2 emissions by 118 million kilograms as well as averting PET plastic waste in landfills. All of these are in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals for promoting sustainable manufacturing and resource utilization (SDG 12).
"At present, IVL is collaborating with two world-class startups – Loop Industries in North America and Ioniqa in Europe – to develop chemical recycling innovations that can convert used PET down into basic molecules. This new technology will break barriers in colored PET recycling, which has long been a dream in the recycling industry. It is expected that the development of this advanced technology will be completed by 2020. This shall amply support our resolution to become a global leader delivering great products for the world in accordance with our vision at IVL."
"PET is not for one-time use because it can be endlessly recycled for multiple applications through efficient recycling processes. This includes food and drink packaging applications. The more recycling of PET, the less demand for newly produced plastic pellets. In effect, this not only increases the demand for rPET packaging, but also boosts the recycling industry through value creation across the entire chain. It will also put the PET recycling industry in a vital position to segregate plastic waste for reuse," Mr. Jones concluded.