MOSCOW (MRC) -- To meet growing demand, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) reclaimer Evergreen has recently bought a pair of facilities and added another extruder to an expansion project, according to Plastics Recysling Update.
A plastics recycling and manufacturing company owned by The Sterling Group, Evergreen had a single facility in Clyde, Ohio in January 2021. It bought CarbonLite’s first PET recycling facility in Riverside, Calif. in May 2021 after CarbonLite filed for bankruptcy.
Evergreen announced Feb. 9 that it purchased UltrePET in Albany, N.Y. and Novapet in Amherst, Nova Scotia, in November 2021. UltrePET, now named Evergreen Albany, and Novapet, now named Evergreen Amherst, were acquired from wTe Corp. The acquisitions will allow Evergreen to expand its overall production capacity from about 40 million pounds a year to 147 million pounds of food-grade RPET.
An expansion project at the original Clyde location, scheduled to be finished in June 2022, will increase production capacity further, to over 217 million pounds per year. The project will add a 54,000-square-foot building to the existing 238,000-square-foot facility.
Evergreen General Manager Greg Johnson said the company has spent a total of USD200 million on the acquisitions and expansion. The Ohio expansion was originally just going to add a single new extruder, but the company recently decided to add another for a total of four extruders at the facility.
CEO and President Omar Abuaita said the company is looking to continue to expand in the RPET space and “secure the supply for the bales, which is fairly important in today’s RPET world.”
Evergreen’s expansion as of late has been supported by investments. The American Beverage Association (ABA), Ohio Beverage Association and investment firm Closed Loop Partners put a combined USD5 million into the Ohio project.
Johnson said Evergreen spends “a lot of time innovating and upgrading our processes to try to produce not only the best PET, but customized recycled PET that can meet the varying demand of our different customers.”
COVID-19 did not have a big effect on Evergreen after the initial few months of 2020 when “nobody wanted to touch a bottle,” Abuaita said.
“Things are back to normal but normal is not a good thing,” he said. “Our collection system is broken. It’s not sustainable, not with the demand.”
As MRC reported earlier, in October 2020, Pactiv Evergreen announced a new goal that by 2030, 100% of its products will be made with recycled, recyclable or renewable materials.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, the estimated PET consumption in Russia remained steady year on year in December 2021. December estimate PET consumption was 67,880 tonnes (67,710 tonnes in December 2020).
Russia's overall estimated PET consumption totalled 805,470 tonnes in 2021, up by 13% year on year (714,760 tonnes in 2020).
MRC