Panda, a waste and recycling company headquartered in Ireland, has announced plans to invest €15 million ($20.8 million) to build a plastics recycling facility in the United Kingdom. Panda is a part of Beauparc, an Ireland-based company involved in waste management, recycling and energy recovery.

“We are delighted to be making this investment as a move to offer our customers a more sustainable recycling solution for plastic [scrap],” says Eamon Waters, CEO of Beauparc. “Previously, as a company, we had to heavily rely on China as the only destination for plastics recycling. The new facility, which will slot in with Beauparc’s growing U.K. presence, will employ about 40 people and will process [scrap] plastic films from both Ireland and the U.K. into new plastic products.”

Along with the uncertainty over China as an end market for plastic film, the European Commission’s promotion of growing the circular economy also was a factor in the new investment, say company officials.

Waters says while the company had initially hoped to locate the facility in Ireland, regulatory challenges has made it difficult to quickly site and build a facility in the country. Meanwhile, Waters notes, “The U.K. regulator has ready-to-go protocols in place to allow us to start development on an approved site immediately. Operations are expected to commence in August.”

The new project will operate under Beauparc’s Irish Packing Recycling (IPR) business and will be named Irish Plastic Manufacturing (IPM). The project is expected to initially process up to 15,000 metric tons of plastic per year, particularly LDPE (low density polyethylene) shrink wrap film.

IPR, originally operated by Smurfit Recycling, was acquired by Beauparc in 2007. IPR’s services include collecting, sorting, baling and marketing recyclables. The company trades more than 335,000 metric tons of recyclables each year and is the largest trader of recycled fiber in Ireland. The company operates three facilities in Dublin.

The recycling process will include sorting the film as it arrives to ensure no cross contamination from foreign objects, other plastic types and paper. The clean material will be shredded into smaller pieces. Following this the material will be washed, passed through a magnet and granulated. Granulated material will then be cleaned before being dried using both mechanical and thermal driers, before finally being extruded into pellets. These pellets will be quality assured in IPR’s onsite laboratory before being sold directly to Irish manufacturers to make LDPE products, according to IPR.

“We have consulted with Repak, the Department for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the EPA and the relevant Local Authority to ensure that our project will further steer Ireland towards its EU directive recycling targets by 2020 as well as enabling the creation of more job opportunities and providing Irish Manufacturers with direct access to plastic materials,” says Des Crinion, IPR’s managing director. Repak is the body that oversees recycling in Ireland.

 

Source: recyclingtoday.com

Report Abuse