UK-based bottle recycling company ECO Plastics said Monday it has signed a joint-venture agreement with Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd. to build a new GBP15 million ($24.5 million) bottle recycling plant in Lincolnshire, in the UK.
The new 40,000 mt/year plant, which will be built next to ECO Plastics' existing 100,000 mt/year recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) plant, is likely to be completed next year, according to a company statement.
Coca Cola signed a 10-year joint-venture deal with Eco Plastics and is investing GBP5 million in the new plant. Under the agreement, ECO Plastics will supply the beverage company with enough RPET to achieve Coca Cola's target of using 25% RPET in all plastic bottles by 2012.
At present, Coca Cola sources food-grade RPET from continental Europe and about two-thirds of recycled plastics in Britain is exported.
"Coca Cola is committed to transforming recycling in Great Britain. Our investment in this project with ECO Plastics will start to address the recycling challenges in this country," Coca Cola's managing director in the country said in a statement.
However, several RPET sources have said that the quality of recycled bottle feedstocks within the UK is considerably poorer than recycled bottles in continental Europe, where collection of recycled material is organized differently.
One RPET producer in Europe said he doesn't consider RPET companies in the UK to be serious competitors to his business.
"They have to work with the worst feedstocks in all of Europe. It remains virtually impossible to create the quality produced in the Netherlands or Germany based on the feedstock differences," the producer said.
