Evergreen orders additional extrusion lines for Ohio rPET facility

Recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) producer Evergreen has confirmed to Recycling Today it has ordered two additional extrusion lines for its facility in Clyde, Ohio.

The completion of production expansion at its Clyde facility in July made Evergreen one of the three largest producers of rPET in North America, with 217 million pounds of annual capacity, but CEO Omar Abuaita says the addition of the two extrusion lines will make the Clyde site the largest rPET facility in the world.

“Out of the two additional lines, one is already on order and we’re working on the sixth line,” Abuaita says.

Prior the to addition, the Clyde facility had an annual capacity of 113 million pounds of food-grade rPET. The two lines add an additional 27 million to 30 million pounds of capacity each, giving the site an annual capacity of up to 173 million pounds.

Abuaita says customers have been eager for the company to up its production capacity even after the $22 million Clyde upgrade, but Evergreen held off until it could secure enough supply to justify the expansion.

“Our customers would love for us to double our footprint and double our throughput,” he says. “We’d love to do that as well, and we’re willing and able, but until we have security of supply, we don’t do that. That’s not our style.”

He adds, “The reason for that is, the way we go about it is we don’t promise customers supply we cannot fulfill and we wait until we secure the raw material. Once we have security of supply of raw material, we are more than able and willing to write a check for another line or another greenfield facility.”

The Clyde expansion began in 2021 and included a 54,000-square-foot addition that can process 11.8 billion PET bottles annually. The investment included $5 million under the American Beverage Association’s Every Bottle Back initiative in partnership with the Ohio Beverage Association and New York-based Closed Loop Partners.

Last year, Evergreen added facilities in Albany, New York; Amherst, Nova Scotia; and Riverside, California.

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The company also has confirmed it has been certified by the Ocean Bound Plastic (OBP) Certification Program in which member organizations are determined to adequately and ethically collect OBP, that the material is well-managed once collected, commercially recyclable OBP is traceable until the final recycled product and noncommercially recyclable OBP is correctly handed and corresponding plastic credits are thoroughly verified and traceable.

Evergreen joins other U.S. companies Ocean Recovery Group LLC, Oceanworks and Return Textiles LLC as certified OBP recycling organizations.

Read more about Evergreen’s expansion at its Clyde facility in the fall edition of Plastics Recycling.