On October 19th, construction work started on a new recycling facility for PET bottles commissioned by a joint-venture between the Freudenberg group (D-69465 Weinheim; www.freudenberg.de) and Rethmann Group (D-59379 Selm; www.rethmann.de) in Kaiserslautern / Germany. The plant will be operated by the freshly founded first PET Deutschland GmbH. The company has invested almost EUR 16m in the Kaiserslautern facility and has created employment for 33 people.

In addition to the new German site, the companies are operating two facilities in Italy belonging to Freudenberg, one plant in Taiwan and another in the Netherlands, both belonging to Rethmann. In total, the joint-venture has 200 employees and expects a turnover of EUR 65m. The Kaiserslautern facility is suitable for the production of 20,000 t/y of recycled material. The plant´s production capacities can be doubled. PET bottles formerly used for non-alcoholic beverages such as mineral water are collected, the polyester components are separated from the waste material and pressed into 400 kg bales. In the facilities operated by the joint-venture, the bottles are washed, shredded and after flotation they are sorted to be processed into flakes or pellets by extrusion. This high-quality recycled material is used for the production of non-woven fabric by Freudenberg and other companies. The Kaiserslautern facility is planned to come on stream in January 2004.