The plastics manufacturer Petoskey Plastics, Petoskey, Mich., has added $3 million in capital improvements to its Hartford City, Ind., plastics recycling facility. The company says the investment went toward the purchase and installation of new equipment that could add as much as 50 percent more capacity at the plant. The company says the investment will help meet demand for blown plastic film and bag products manufactured at its plants in Petoskey and in Morristown, Tenn.
The investment includes the addition of a second recycling line and an upgrade of the facility's wash line, which should boost the amount of scrap plastic generated, the company says.
Steve Smith, Petoskey director of manufacturing, says the new equipment will greatly improve processing capabilities and allow the plant to increase its output of recycled plastic resin pellets by more than 1 million pounds per month. "We've seen robust growth of our GreenPE resin and products containing post-consumer recycled plastic, so this expansion will allow us to keep up with the demand," says Smith.
The company says the expansion will result in diverting an additional 1.5 million pounds of post-consumer recycled plastics per month from the waste stream. Smith estimates that about 80 percent of the company's raw material is post consmer. Of the post-industrial scrap the company uses, approximately 75 percent is generated by Petoskey's own plants.
In addition to shipping GreenPE resin to its own manufacturing plants, Petoskey markets the resin to other manufacturers. Petoskey says its SCS-certified GreenPE resin contains 99 percent post-consumer recycled plastic.
"For over 30 years, we've never stopped thinking green," says Petoskey President and Co-Founder Paul Keiswetter. "This is another milestone in our continuing efforts to manufacture products that are good for our customers and good for the environment."