Formerly known as ImerPlast, Bright Green Plastics has invested in a new wash plant and upgraded its extruding machinery.
The firm believes the investment will help it deal with impending legislative changes such as the plastic tax.
From April 2022 a tax of £200 per tonne will apply to manufactured or imported plastic packaging that does not contain at least 30% recycled material (see letsrecycle.com story).
Steve Spencer, Bright Green Plastics’ managing director, said: “It’s crunch time for our industry. The EU and UK plastic tax may be welcome, but it’s also common knowledge that the UK’s capability to produce recycled plastic compounds is currently under capacity. With continued investment into new technology and equipment, we’re working towards bridging that gap.
“As the fastest growing UK recycler of PP and PE plastics, we will continue to invest to keep up with the ever-growing demand for high quality recycled compounds, for as long as recycling plastics in the UK remains viable.”
Bright Green Plastics says it recycles more than 40,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year. The investments constitute no change to the facility’s overall annual reprocessing capacity but will allow the firm to carry out more of the process in-house.
Machinery
The wash plant is designed to shred, wash, purify and granulate post-consumer waste into ready-to-recycle flake product, Bright Green Plastics says. The firm says the machine will process up to five tonnes an hour and recycle all its own water.
Investing in the plant will allow Bright Green Plastics to increase its in-house washing capacity by two-thirds, the firm said. Currently the firm washes around 15,000 tonnes of plastic a year itself and subcontracts the rest, Bright Green Plastics told letsrecycle.com.
The upgraded extruder will melt the plastic and transforms it into pellets, ready to be put back into the manufacturing cycle. It will process up to three tonnes of PP and PE plastic per hour and allow the firm to work with material it had believed to be too difficult to handle, such as flexible plastics.
Both machines are set to be operational by the end of the year, Bright Green Plastics said.
Bright Green Plastics
Bright Green Plastics was founded in 1992 as a subsidiary of the LINPAC Group packaging business. It rebranded as Bright Green Plastics in 2020.
The main materials Bright Green Plastics handles include PP plastics such as pots, trays and tubs and HDPE plastics such as household bottles, water pipes and industrial ducting.
In July 2020, Bright Green Plastics announced it was to invest £750,000 into a plastic sorting plant at its site in West Yorkshire (see letsrecycle.com story).
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