South-East Asia Gets its Largest Plastics Recycling Plant

Austria-based plastics production and recycling company ALPLA and Thailand-based petrochemical company PTT Global Chemical have partnered and set up ENVICCO (Environment Circular Collaboration), South-East Asia’s largest plastics recycling plant. PTT owns a 70% stake in the new partnership, while ALPLA holds the remaining 30%.

It took just 18 months for the firms to construct the plant, and it is capable of recycling about 30,000 tonnes of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET.) of food grade and 15,000 tonnes of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE). Through this new plant, both companies will improve the area’s circular economy and provide the developing markets with recycled materials of high quality.

The plant is of size 30,000 square metres situated in Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate (an economic zone on the shoreline of the south-eastern territory of Rayong). It is outfitted with modern recycling machinery and manufacturing lines to produce plastic recyclates of the best quality with authorization from the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration).

Günther Lehner, Chairman of ALPLA group, said that the plant was built in record time and that an Avant-grade plant is vital for the company’s recycling activities in Asia. Bernd Wachter, ALPLA Corporate Director, Circular Economy & Recycling Asia, said that the call for recycled, viable bundling materials is developing swiftly in south-east Asia, and plastics of high quality have got a crucial role to play in this area; With the advent of the new plant, ALPLA now uses its years of knowledge in the processing and treatment of packaging made from post-consumer recycled resins: The new partnership is absolutely circular, ecological scheme making a wide-ranging value chain for plastics in Thailand and is a perfect illustration of the international use of Austrian ecologically sound expertise.

ALPA will provide its manufacturing resources in Asia with recycled material and is also encouraging a circular economy at a regional level. With this plant, key shareholder PTT cares for sustainable growth in the area, marching towards resource-saving lifestyles and businesses. Initially, the plant would use approximately 180 locals for production activities.

Kongkrapan Intarajang, C.E.O. of PTT, said that her company was delighted to announce that ENVICOO was ready for commercial activities: Used plastics in Thailand would make up the entire base materials treated by the partnership’s state-of-the-art manufacturing machinery to change used plastics into valuable goods. The new plant is a portion of PTT’s enduring circular economy approach to realize PTT’s value chain entirely.  

In the early days of 2021, the ALPLA group revealed that it would finance about 50 million Euros annually until 2025 in the current enlargement of its recycling activities. Specifically, the group proposes to universalize its activities in the domain of recyclates of the best quality to close the materials cycle in as many areas as probable. The annual production capacity of ALPLA’s recycling firms globally is about 203,000 tonnes of R-PET and 74,000 tonnes of recycled HDPE.