Plastipak makes European recycling investment

Plymouth, Michigan-based Plastipak, which makes plastic containers, says it has completed a “major investment to significantly expand its PET recycling capacity” at its manufacturing site in Bascharage, Luxembourg.

The original PET recycling facility in Luxembourg opened in 2008. The new expansion, says the firm, increases annual production capacity at the plant by 136 percent.  The installation and commissioning of the expansion took 12 months, says Plastipak.

The recycling facility is co-located with a Plastipak preform and container manufacturing facility that converts washed rPET flakes originating from post-consumer bottles into food-grade recycled PET (rPET) pellets. 

The rPET produced at the site is converted into new preforms and containers produced at the Bascharage facility, which principally serves the German and Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) food and beverage markets. Plastipak has additional recycling facilities in France, the United Kingdom and the United States and is building a new recycling facility at its plant in Toledo, Spain.

“This latest investment to increase our capacity in rPET production actively demonstrates Plastipak’s long-term commitment to bottle-to-bottle recycling and our leadership in the PET circular economy,” says Pedro Martins, executive managing director of Plastipak’s European division. “Plastipak is the leading producer of food-grade rPET in Europe, with the majority of the post-consumer recycled material we use in Europe produced in-house.”

“Plastipak began producing post-consumer recycled resins for packaging customers in 1989 and has had many expansions in North America and Europe since then,” says said Dave Stajninger, Plastipak’s Global recycling Business Manager. “We are excited to continue supporting our global packaging customers in achieving their sustainability goals.”

Plastipak describes itself as a major convertor of recycled PET, which represents 27 percent of the total resin consumed in Plastipak’s European sites in 2020. In Bascharage, the proportion of recycled resin consumed in 2020 was 45.3 percent.