Austria’s leading packaging plastic producer ALPLA signed a contract with Germany headquartered BTB Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Recycling for the acquisition of the latter, on September 28.
BTB PET Recycling, having its name derived from ‘bottle-to-bottle’ PET recycling, predominantly focuses on establishing a circular loop by recycling waste PET bottles and using them for producing new beverage containers. The process typically involves sequential sorting, shredding, cleaning and then resorting of the feed PET, which is eventually melted in an extrusion process to generate recycled food-grade PET pellets. The installed facility can process 20,000 tonnes of PET bottles on yearly basis.
ALPLA views this acquisition as an opportunity to enhance its recycled PET product portfolio. It is worth noting that ALPLA has been tirelessly making efforts towards providing sustainable solutions to its customer base. Very recently, ALPLA acquired a Spanish plastic major, Plastisax, that furnished customer solutions through its expertise in producing plastic packaging from recycled HDPE and PET content.
PET is a lightweight plastic produced from the polymerization of ethylene glycol with terephthalic acid under high temperature and low vacuum pressure conditions. The transparency and flexibility of this polymer advocates its wide usage in the packaging of beverages and film coverings for food. Most of the single-use plastics used in everyday life are composed of PET. The other applications of PET are seen in the construction and automotive components.
The global recycled polyethylene terephthalate market in 2020 was valued at around USD 8.6 billion. The pressure created by stringing environmental laws has stimulated many companies to increase their efforts in the direction of climate change, which in turn has expanded the production and distribution of recycled PET.
As per ChemAnalyst, with changing customer preferences for recycled products, the demand for polyethylene terephthalate is expected to further rise in the coming decade. ALPLA’s continued acquisitions of recycled plastic producers reflect its ideology towards sustainable development. These investments will strengthen ALPLA’s position in the recycled products market and end-to-end transformation technologies.
