A new PET recycling facility in the Mexican state of Tabasco is about to go onstream. The plant will be operated by Alpla (Hard, Austria; www.alpla.com) as a joint venture with soft drinks bottler Coca-Cola Femsa (Mexico City, Mexico; www.coca-colafemsa.com/en). The foundation stone for the Planta Nueva Ecología de Tabasco – or Planeta for short – was laid at the start of 2022, with some USD 60 mn (EUR 56 mn) being invested in the plant.

The production facility in the municipality of Cunduacán in southeastern Mexico is scheduled to commence operation in July of this year, and has a processing capacity of more than 50,000 t/y for PET bottles, according to Alpla. The material comes from dedicated collection points which receive deliveries from intermediaries, who have purchased the used bottles from regional collectors. The planned output is 35,000 t/y rPET.

Each of these 18 collection points also has two pick-up trucks equipped with trailers to collect recyclable materials from remote regions. Alpla reports that when operating at full capacity, the recycling plant will create some 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. For 30 to 35 kg – corresponding to around 1,000 PET bottles – Alpla says collectors can generate an income equivalent to the Mexican minimum wage, depending on the current purchase price. 

Alpla also operates a plant for recycling HDPE packaging in Toluca, Mexico.

The Austrian plastics packaging manufacturer has 13 recycling facilities worldwide, four of which are joint ventures with regional partners. Its capacities currently total 266,000 t/y for rPET and 84,000 t/y for rHDPE. Alpla currently uses 20% recycled plastics and intends to increase this figure to 25% by 2025. The group most recently generated sales of EUR 4.7 bn with 23,300 employees at 196 locations in 47 countries.