Republic to build third Polymer Center in Pennsylvania

Republic Services Inc. has selected Pennsylvania for the site of its third Polymer Center.

According to Pete Keller, the Phoenix-based waste and recycling company’s vice president of recycling and sustainability, the Polymer Center parcel, near Allentown, spans about 10 acres. An associated Blue Polymers facility in Allentown will be operated by joint venture partner Ravago, a Luxembourg-based plastic recycling and distribution company.

Keller tells Recycling Today that site preparation work has begun for the new Polymer Center, with building construction scheduled to begin in late October. He says equipment installation could begin in April 2026, with the facility expected to be operational by the end of that year.

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He notes that the Pennsylvania location is a sound fit logistically and in terms of available material.

“The Northeast is a large population center with a high volume of material and lots of demand for that material,” Keller says. “There’s also a lot of conversion capacity, with a number of bottlers in the region.

“Early indications are that demand for our rPET [recycled polyethylene terephthalate] flake will be strong. With our existing Las Vegas and Indianapolis facilities, Allentown will help us continue to build out our national hub-and-spoke Polymer Center network.”

The Polymer Center and Blue Polymers facilities are designed to work together to produce more than 175 million pounds per year of recycled plastics for use in food-grade packaging and other applications. The Polymer Center is owned and operated by Republic, which also serves as a joint venture partner in Blue Polymers along with Ravago.

The facilities mechanically process plastics collected from homes and businesses, including PET, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP). Republic says that at each facility, PET is shredded and washed to produce rPET flake for use in new beverage bottles, while HDPE, or high-density polyethylene, and PP, or polyethelene, are sorted by color and type and sent to Blue Polymers to be compounded, blended and pelletized, creating custom drop-in products for customers.

The first Polymer Center opened in December 2023 in Las Vegas, and the second facility, co-located with a Blue Polymers plant in Indianapolis, opened in March.

Though the Allentown facilities will not be co-located as in Indianapolis, Keller says the Polymer Center’s design will be “essentially identical” to the Indianapolis site, which has a nameplate capacity of 80,000 metric tons per year.

During Republic’s second-quarter earnings call July 29, CEO John Vander Ark noted that both Polymer Center locations are progressing and the company is continuing to learn as it operates.

“Certainly, we had some learning curve [in Las Vegas] in terms of exactly the quality specs our customers wanted and getting that communication clear,” he said. “I think Vegas is making great progress. And then, Indy is hitting its mark because we’ve taken all the learnings from Las Vegas and built those into Indianapolis. Then, we’ll leverage all those learnings, of course, in Pennsylvania for a third center as well.

“So, I feel very excited that we’re capturing the benefits of those learnings, and we have the supply. That’s one of the reasons we did it. And the demand for the product is through the roof. The world is short supply. The country is short supplied on recycled PET. I still feel very confident about the returns profile of this over time.”