Coca Cola Enterprises (CCE) has announced that it will invest £5 million (US$8 million) with ECO Plastics plant to develop a recycling facility in Lincolnshire, U.K.
When fully operational, the new facility will boost the total recycled PET reprocessed for food-grade applications in Great Britain to more than 75,000 metric tons, more than double the recycled PET currently produced in the country for food-grade applications.
The new plastics reprocessing plant will also supply CCE with enough high-quality recycled PET in Great Britain to achieve CCE's target of including 25 percent recycled PET in all its plastic packaging in the country by 2012.
Simon Baldry, CCE’s Great Britain managing director, says, "CCE is committed to transforming recycling in Great Britain. Our investment in this project with ECO Plastics will start to address the recycling challenges in this country. British PET bottles will be recycled for reuse in packaging that will be sold from the shelves of British retailers.
To accomplish this, CCE has signed a ten-year joint venture deal with ECO Plastics that guarantees an annual supply of recycled PET to CCE.
In addition to CCE’s investment, ECO Plastics is raising an additional $16.154 million to complete funding for the project.
The new recycling facility will be built on ECO Plastics' current site in Lincolnshire, and is expected to be operational by 2012.
According to a release, ECO Plastics' existing facility is already the largest in Europe, capable of processing more than 100,000 metric tons of waste plastic
Jonathan Short, managing director, ECO Plastics, says, "ECO Plastics has made huge strides in developing our business in recent years, to become the UK's leading plastic recycler. We are delighted to be partnering with a company of the caliber of Coca-Cola Enterprises and view this pioneering agreement as the next important step for our own business and the industry as a whole.