Nampak Plastics Europe (Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire / UK; www.eu.nampak.com) is building a plastic milk bottle manufacturing plant at a dairy processing site in Northern Ireland. The packaging manufacturer said it is investing GBP 3m (EUR 3.3m) in the plant, which is part of a long-term partnership with Northern Irish dairy processing company Dale Farm (Belfast; www.dalefarm.co.uk). The project is supported by Northern Ireland’s economic development agency Invest NI (www.investni.com), with part funding by the European Regional Development Fund (http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funds/feder/index_en.htm).

Nampak expects the plant to become operational in early summer 2010 and lead to the creation of 20 jobs. The new facility will be located adjacent to Dale Farm’s site in Ballymena, and will allow Nampak bottles to be used by Dale Farm immediately after manufacture. “Locating the bottle manufacturing and filling in one location removes the need to transport bottles between our sites, dramatically cutting transportation costs and the associated carbon emissions,” said Jamie Tinsley, sales director at Nampak. The plant will include four blow-moulding machines, manufacturing more than 100m milk bottles/year. Nampak bottles manufactured at the new plant will also be supplied to other dairies in Ireland.

Nampak plans to include a minimum of 10% recycled HDPE in the bottles produced at the new facility, Tinsley said. The company declared earlier this year that all HDPE milk bottles produced this year will include up to 10% recycled material – see Plasteurope.com of 21.01.2010.