£12m Welsh plant to recycle 50,000 tonnes of plastic bottles

A new £12m plastics recycling plant in North Wales will create 50 jobs and process 50,000 tonnes of water, milk and other soft drinks bottles, which would otherwise end up in landfill, back into new food packaging.

The Closed Loop Recycling plant has received private equity funding from alternative asset manager the Foresight Group and public sector funding from the Welsh Assembly.

Chris Dow, MD of Closed Loop Recycling, says:

“We are committed to an ongoing investment programme to build closed loop recycling infrastructure in the UK. We believe we are pioneering the future in packaging solutions.

“Until we started operations there was no facility to recycle plastic bottles back into plastic food packaging. Now that we provide that facility, the industry is beginning to view recycled plastic in a new light.
It’s no longer waste. It’s becoming a valuable resource. In addition, each plastic bottle we recycle reduces that bottle’s carbon footprint by around 25 per cent.”

Brands that have already signed up to buy plastic output from the plant include Coca-Cola Enterprises, Logoplaste, Nampak and Solo Cup Europe. Veolia Environmental will provide the bottles to be recycled.

Closed Loop says the total number of plastic bottles entering the UK waste system is around 525,000 tonnes a year – equivalent to 13 billion bottles, with about a third being recycled and the rest exported or sent to landfill.