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Presse-Paket
Bilder und Texte

ALPLA Group: 50 mil­lion euros a year for recycling

Expan­sion and glo­ba­li­sa­tion of recy­cling acti­vi­ties to be expe­dited bet­ween now and 2025

Hard, 19 February 2021 – The ALPLA Group, a world leader in the deve­lo­p­ment, pro­duc­tion and recy­cling of pla­stic pack­a­ging, is to invest up to 50 mil­lion euros a year on average bet­ween now and 2025 in fur­ther expan­ding its recy­cling acti­vi­ties. In par­ti­cular, it plans to glo­ba­lise its acti­vi­ties in the area of high-quality recy­clates in order to close the mate­rials cycle in as many regions as possible.

In 2018, the pack­a­ging and recy­cling spe­cia­list the ALPLA Group signed the Global Com­mit­ment of the New Pla­s­tics Eco­nomy (an initia­tive of the Ellen Mac­Ar­thur Foun­da­tion) and com­mitted to spen­ding a total of 50 mil­lion euros to expand its recy­cling acti­vi­ties up to 2025. ALPLA is now signi­fi­cantly incre­asing this invest­ment target. From 2021, an average of 50 mil­lion euros a year will be ring-fenced spe­ci­fi­cally for recycling.

‘We have been very active in the past two years. We suc­ceeded in initia­ting bottle-to-bottle pro­jects around the world, inclu­ding in Asia, Europe and Cen­tral Ame­rica. We nevert­heless con­tinue to see incre­asing demand on the part of our cus­to­mers all over the world,’ explains Georg Lässer, Head of Cor­po­rate Recy­cling at ALPLA. This sus­tained demand gives ALPLA the oppor­tu­nity to kick-start fur­ther invest­ment pro­jects, says Lässer. Gün­ther Lehner, Chairman of the Com­pany Advi­sory Board, stresses that the com­pany will focus on high-quality appli­ca­tion areas in new regions: ‘Our aim is to estab­lish a bottle-to-bottle cycle – inclu­ding in regions in which the recy­cling of waste does not curr­ently play a large part.’

Ser­ving as a role model around the world
Georg Lässer sees long-term deve­lo­p­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in count­ries out­side of Europe: ‘Cus­to­mers around the world enquire about pack­a­ging made with a pro­por­tion of recy­cled mate­rials, inclu­ding in Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, China and India.’ On Europe, the expert comm­ents as fol­lows: ‘This market is now highly com­pe­ti­tive. We secured a strong market posi­tion early on in Wes­tern Europe with our own plants and part­ner­ships, and this is some­thing we want to fur­ther con­so­li­date.’ Gün­ther Lehner adds: ‘Our plants in Aus­tria and Poland have done pio­nee­ring work. Day in, day out, we are demons­t­ra­ting that used pack­a­ging is of value and that there is great poten­tial in a recy­cling eco­nomy. We want to boost this under­stan­ding in more countries.’

Key mile­stones achieved
Its move into HDPE recy­cling in 2019 repres­ents ano­ther mile­stone for ALPLA. This is being con­tinued with the con­s­truc­tion of a plant in Toluca, Mexico, which is sche­duled to go into pro­duc­tion in autumn 2021. The com­pany is also curr­ently crea­ting a PET and HDPE recy­cling plant in Thai­land tog­e­ther with a coope­ra­tion partner. Capa­ci­ties at the exis­ting plants in Aus­tria, Poland and Ger­many have been expanded over the past two years and just recently, ALPLA announced the instal­la­tion of an rPET extru­sion system at one of its own pre­form plants in Italy. In all, the annual capa­city of the ALPLA recy­cling com­pa­nies, joint ven­tures and part­ner­ships amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 130,000 tonnes of PET and 60,000 tonnes of PE.

More infor­ma­tion about the com­pany: www.alpla.com

Enquiry infor­ma­tion for editorial
ALPLA, Alex­andra Dittrich (Senior Sus­taina­bi­lity Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Manager), tel.: +43 (0)5574 602 1083, email: alexandra.dittrich@alpla.com
Pzwei. Pres­se­ar­beit, Werner F. Sommer, tel.: +43 (0)699 1025 4817, email: werner.sommer@pzwei.at