Plastipak Packaging Breaks Ground on Project

Plastipak Packaging, a manufacturer of rigid plastic containers, has broken ground on an expansion to its Clean Tech plastic recycling facility in Dundee, Mich. The expansion makes room for the installation of additional plastic recycling processing technology at the site. The company says the new facility will increase the availability of ultraclean recycled PET plastic resin for Plastipak's consumer product industry customers. With recycling capacity installed in all of the global regions in which it operates, Plastipak expects to recycle about 5 billion plastic bottles this year, and the expansion will support the company’s goal of recycling 10 billion plastic bottles within five years.

Most of the plastics that will be used at the new facility will come through curbside collection programs. A spokesman for Plastipak says that the company will make pellets from the collected PET bottles.

Plastipak opened its Michigan Clean Tech site in 1988. Additionally, the company operates plastics recycling facilities in Luxembourg and Brazil.

A spokesman for the company says Plastipak will benefit from additional production capacity for ultraclean post-consumer PET plastic resin, increasingly in demand from its customers because retail consumers are demanding more recycled content in the packaging for the products they choose on store shelves.

Clean Tech and Plastipak Packaging are wholly owned subsidiaries of Plastipak Holdings, headquartered in Plymouth, Mich.