CarbonLITE Opening Recycled PET Facility

HPC Industries has announced that its CarbonLITE Industries’ recycling venture is locating its new operations in a 220,000-square-foot facility in Riverside, Calif. The plant is scheduled to come on-stream by the middle of next year.

When operational, the facility will produce bottle-grade PET pellet and flake from post-consumer recycled PET bottles.

In the first phase of the operation, the plant will have an annual capacity of 100 million pounds per year. Leon Farahnik, chairman of HPC Industries, says that when operational, the plant will be the largest bottle-grade post consumer recycled PET producer in the western United States.

The company adds that capacity of the plant will double to 200 million pounds when the second phase comes on-stream in 2012.

“Making packaging degradable is not the answer. . . “that’s almost as bad as incineration. The implications for carbon reduction and resource preservation make recycling the only responsible option,” says Neville Browne, president of CarbonLITE in a release announcing the project.

“The success of any recycling program demands the highest level of quality output so that virgin-material displacement is seamless. In the first phase of our Riverside operation we will be investing $40 million in state-of-the-art equipment to make certain that happens,” Browne adds.