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By Frank Esposito
Packaging veteran opening PET bottle recycling facility

The plant will receive all of its raw material in the form of baled PET bottles from the Plastic Recycling Corp. of California, a private non-profit organization previously chaired by Flexon. The plant will convert the bottles into flake and stored in silos before being crystallized, said Flexon, who now is with Plastic Environmental Technology LLC of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The operation is expected to cover between 5,600 and 7,400 square meters and will employ between 65 and 70. It’s expected to open with 27,200 metric tons of capacity for recycled PET during the first quarter of 2009. Another 27,200 square meters of capacity is set to arrive in the third quarter of 2010.

The project was announced at the Packaging Conference, an event held in Las Vegas, February 4 to 6. The event was co-sponsored by consulting firms Plastic Technologies Inc. and
SBA-CCI Inc.

Flexon - which has previous market experience with Johnson Controls Inc. and Amcor PET Packaging - looked at several sites in California and Arizona before settling on Modesto. Of the plant’s output, 45,400 metric tons will be FDA-qualified, food-grade resin. Flexon said buyers already are in place for half of the plant’s output.

“The material can be used in the same ways as virgin PET,” Flexon said. “And we hope to be priced at parity or better then domestic PET.”

The plant is being modelled after a similar plant opened by Amcor in Beaune, France, in 2002. Flexon also previously managed a 13,600-metric-tons-per-year capacity recycling plant operated by Amcor in Novi, Michigan.

Flexon has an ownership stake in the proposed new plant, along with several partners and private equity firm Plainfield Asset Management LLC of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Plastic Environmental Technology’s new plant is the latest in a string of big PET recycling projects announced in North America. The biggest was announced in September - a $45 million (323.5 million yuan), 45,400-metric-tons-per-year plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, being built by Coca-Cola Co. and United Resource Recovery Corp. That plant is scheduled to start operating in September.