SITA boosts recycling presence

From left, Marc Houweling, CEO of Houweling Group and Wiegerr Droogh, managing director, SITA.

SITA, a subsidiary of Paris-based Suez Environnement, has announced that its Dutch location has acquired the recycling activities of Houweling Group, a Netherlands-based international supplier and distributor of packaging products. With the acquisition SITA says it is able to strengthen its plastics recycling business in the country.

The acquisition includes two production lines for recycling polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) into a usable raw material. The company says it expects to produce around 3,600 metric tons of recycled plastic granules per year.

The Houweling Group has specialized in the international trade in packaging, transporting and warehousing. As a side business Houweling had been handling the recycling of its non-reusable, returnable packaging internally by grinding and selling the product into new plastic products.

Following the acquisition, Houweling will focus on its core business of collecting used plastic products and packaging and delivering it after they have been cleaned, dried and re-tested by customers; the unusable plastic waste will be ground into granules by SITA and will be returned into raw material that can be produced back into plastic containers and packaging products.

In selling its recycling division, Marc Houweling, CEO of the Houweling Group, says, "Disposal is not part of our core business and we want our international position as a packaging supplier to strengthen.” On the other side, Houweling says that SITA’s expertise is in the recycling business.

“By combining the knowledge of both parties, we are able to reinforce each other," Houweling adds.

“As a director of the plastic chain - from collection and transfer to processing and recycling of plastics (packaging) materials from households and industry, SITA has access to the raw materials. With the acquisition of Houweling’s recycling activities we expand our business with the industrial production of recycled plastics,” says Wiegerr Droogh, SITA’s managing director. “Industry and government have an increasing need for recycled plastics that are reworked into new high-quality raw materials to make new products. Due to supply to industrial customers, return these materials we close the chain. The combination of our plastic recycling sorting plant and the new unit will be in Rotterdam a wide high-grade plastic recycling competence center occur.”