The plastics manufacturer Placon Corp., Madison, Wis., has officially opened its EcoStar closed-loop plastics recycling facility in Fitchburg, Wis.
According to a release, with the opening of the new plant Placon becomes one of the first thermoforming companies in the food and consumer packaging industry to implement its own in-house recycling to process both post-consumer bottles and thermoforms. The company says that the 70,000-square-foot facility will allow the company to create a stand-alone manufacturing location under the EcoStar name.
EcoStar purchases bales of post-consumer PET bottles and mixed bales of post-consumer thermoform packaging, grinds them, washes them and processes them into sheet and flake. The company’s recycled PET products include flake, letter of non-object (LNO) flake for food packaging and sheet products for the food and consumer products markets.
At full capacity, EcoStar will process 36 million pounds of inbound material per year.
“We are excited about our new EcoStar facility as it enables us to produce consumer packaging from 100 percent post-consumer PET recyclate,” says Dan Mohs, Placon’s CEO.
Along with the ability to wash and recycle PET, half of the new facility has been designed for sheet extrusion.
“Our $14 million investment demonstrates our commitment to sustainable packaging and the reduction of solid waste. We believe that the best way to reduce energy consumption and conserve resources, from a cradle-to-grave perspective, is to recycle plastic packaging back into plastic packaging, thereby closing the loop,” Mohs adds.
In addition to its Madison and Fitchburg facility, Placon has a manufacturing facility in Suzhou, China.