ADREM to build mixed plastics recycling plant in Japan

Menen, Belgium-based Group Galloo has announced that its equipment manufacturing subsidiary Advanced Design of Recycling Machines (ADREM) will be responsible for building what it calls Japan’s largest and most advanced plastic recycling facility.

The facility will be run as a joint venture between Toyota Tsusho, Veolia Japan and Kojima Sangyo and operate under the name PLANIC. It is being designed to harvest 40,000 metric tons per year of plastic scrap from various sources in Japan.

With the new facility, PLANIC “reacts to an increasing plastic pollution problem in Japan,” according to a news release issued by ADREM. Much plastic scrap in Japan currently is being incinerated, landfilled or sent overseas. Japan’s 3Rs campaign – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – aims to turn this around and promotes more domestic plastic recycling.

ADREM, along with sister company Galloo Plastics, says it is drawing on more than 20 years of experience in plastic recycling from electronic scrap and automotive shredder residue (ASR) build the new plant. Some of the sorting technology is licensed jointly by ADREM and the Valtech Group.

The patented separation technology has already proven its worth, says Galloo, with its recycled plastic able to “meet all required standards as demanded by the automotive industry, automatically qualifying it for a wide array of other possible applications.”

ADREM and Galloo also say the results are “being achieved for a cost that is lower than that of petroleum plastic production, provided the oil price remains higher than $60 per barrel.”

PLANIC’s new plastic recycling facility will process about 40,000 metric tons per year of plastic material coming from sources to include automobiles, home appliances, pallets and containers, and packaging materials from distribution centers and shopping centers. The plant will be located in Omaezaki City, Shizuoka Prefecture and is scheduled to be fully operational by mid-2021.

Galloo Plastics, based in Halluin, France, recycles about 50,000 tons per year of plastics and holds the patents to much of its separation technology.