MOSCOW (MRC) -- Alpek (Monterrey, Mexico) has announced that it has acquired a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling and palletizing plant owned by CarbonLite Recycling LLC in Reading, Pennsylvania, for USD96 million, reported Reuters.
The plant is expected to begin operations in the third quarter 2021, said a statement from Alpek, which is a unit of conglomerate Alfa.
The company was “strongly interested” in the site as it is outfitted with brand-new equipment, including curbside bottle handling, wash lines, and a solid-state polymerizer (SSP) that enables production of food-grade pellets, which are needed for bottle-to-bottle recycling, it says.
The facility has a bottle-to-flake input capacity of 115,000 metric tons/year, and a flake-to-pellet capacity of 49,000 metric tons/year, making it the largest integrated recycled PET (rPET) facility in the Americas, according to Alpek.
The acquisition increases Alpek’s installed rPET capacity to 394,000 metric tons, and achieves its target of supplying selected customers with 25% rPET content before 2025, it says.
As MRC informed before, Alpek swung to a Q1 net income because of higher sales, and it raised its guidance for 2021. During the quarter, Alpek's plants operated without interruption, allowing them to capitalise on the disruption caused by winter storm Uri. In addition, Alpek was able to sell natural gas. The following shows the financial performance of the company's Polyester segment.
Alpek operates two main business segments, focused on polyester, and plastics and chemicals, and is a leading producer of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). It is also the largest EPS manufacturer in the Americas.
MRC