Ohion-based Phoenix Technologies is adding a new $18 million wash line to further integrate its recycled plastic polyethylene terephthalate production, Plastics News reports.
Currently, Phoenix Technologies can process about 85 million pounds of recycled plastics each year. The new equipment, expected to be operational by the end of the year, will have the capacity to handle a little more than 50 million pounds of clean PET flake.
“Over the years as we’ve grown, we‘ve grown our supply base. We have a number of suppliers and they’ve all been great suppliers. But if you can imagine, if you have 10 suppliers, you get 10 different types of quality infeed,” Lori Carson, director of commercial operations, tells Plastics News. “So our main driver was trying to homogenize our quality of feed. So if we’re processing most of what we’re feeding into our resin operation, then our expectation is that the quality is more consistent from day to day.”
PET bottle recycling has increased 53 percent in 12 years, according to report published last year by the National Association for PET Container Resources.
