ALPLA Group

ALPLA UK to focus on regional PET recyclate

Coope­ra­tion with Bri­tish waste manage­ment com­pany Biffa will boost local cir­cular economy

Hard, 10 March 2021 – ALPLA UK, a sub­si­diary of the ALPLA Group, a lea­ding pla­stic pack­a­ging com­pany, will hence­forth be coope­ra­ting with the Bri­tish waste manage­ment com­pany Biffa. With this col­la­bo­ra­tion, ALPLA will increase the pro­por­tion of Bri­tish recy­c­late used in the United Kingdom to manu­fac­ture pack­a­ging for home care products.

From May, ALPLA UK will source food-grade poly­ethy­lene tere­phtha­late (rPET) pla­stic pel­lets from the Biffa recy­cling plant in Seaham, County Durham. The recy­c­late will be used for the manu­fac­ture of home care pack­a­ging. As such, the amount of recy­cled pla­stic used in day-to-day house­hold pro­ducts such as washing-up liquid and clea­ning pro­duct bot­tles will increase.

The part­ner­ship will pro­mote a local cir­cular eco­nomy for pla­s­tics in the United Kingdom. The coll­ec­tion and recy­cling of pla­stic waste help con­serve natural resources and pro­tect the environment.

Major invest­ments in the cir­cular economy
In February, the ALPLA Group announced that it would be inves­ting up to EUR 250 mil­lion in glo­ba­li­sing its recy­cling acti­vi­ties bet­ween now and 2025 in order to close the mate­rials cycle in as many regions as possible.

The col­la­bo­ra­tion with Biffa goes along with our aim to push world­wide closed-loop sys­tems on a local level. This approach gua­ran­tees the hig­hest pos­sible coll­ec­tion rates, recy­cla­bi­lity, and qua­lity of the mate­rials. It also reduces the logi­stical effort related to our pack­a­ging solu­tions. This helps us to achieve the overall objec­tive of redu­cing CO2 emis­sions and actively brin­ging the cir­cular eco­nomy for­ward,’ says Tasos Pour­lou­kakis, UK Country Mana­ging Director at ALPLA Group.

Biffa invested 27.5 mil­lion pounds in the pla­s­tics recy­cling plant which opened in Seaham in 2020 and can pro­cess the equi­va­lent of 1.3 bil­lion bot­tles a year. The com­pany has set itself the ambi­tious goal to qua­druple its pla­s­tics recy­cling capa­city by 2030.

Biffa is a true pio­neer in closed-loop recy­cling, tur­ning waste pla­stic into mate­rials which are a sub­sti­tute for virgin pla­stic. Our part­ner­ship with ALPLA will con­tri­bute to our stra­tegic ambi­tion of a more sus­tainable future built around a cir­cular eco­nomy and we’re loo­king for­ward to con­ti­nuing to work with the team to achieve this,’ says Chris Hanlon, Com­mer­cial Director at Biffa Polymers.

About ALPLA Group
ALPLA is one of the leading companies involved in plastic packaging. Around 21,600 employees worldwide produce custom-made packaging systems, bottles, caps and moulded parts at 178 sites across 45 countries. The high-quality packaging is used in a wide range of areas, including for food and drinks, cosmetics and care products, household detergents, washing and cleaning agents, pharmaceutical products, engine oils and lubricants.
ALPLA operates its own recycling plants for PET and HDPE in Austria, Poland and Spain, and in the form of joint ventures in Mexico and Germany. Other projects are being realised elsewhere around the world.
www.alpla.com

 

About Biffa
Biffa has been at the forefront of the UK’s waste industry for over a hundred years, with operations that span the entire breadth of the waste management process including collection, recycling, treatment, disposal and energy generation. We exist to change the way people think about waste; to help people see the opportunities that exist when we manage our waste in the right way, and to make that happen. We understand the vital role we must play in helping the UK to address the climate emergency and deliver sustainable growth. This involves an ambitious investment programme in green economy infrastructure and low carbon collections, alongside an ongoing commitment to sector leadership in the health, safety and wellbeing of our people. Biffa is a Great British company. In FY20, the Group's total revenue was £1,102.8m and its Underlying EBITDA was £174.0m. We have been listed on the London Stock Exchange since October 2016 under the ticker "BIFF". In March 2020, Biffa entered the FTSE-250.
www.biffa.co.uk/investors

Enquiry infor­ma­tion for editorial
ALPLA, Erik Nielsen (Senior Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Manager), tel.: +43 (0)5574 6021 701, email: erik.nielsen@alpla.com
Pzwei. Pres­se­ar­beit, Werner F. Sommer, tel.: +43 (0)699 1025 4817, email: werner.sommer@pzwei.at