Pratt shows off Australia recycling campus

Visy Industries, an Australia-based part of the Pratt family of companies that have a paperboard recycling and manufacturing presence in the United States, recently showed off its upgraded facility in Coolaroo, Australia.

The paperboard company invested more than $27 million to upgrade its paper recycling and remanufacturing campus in Coolaroo.

The upgrade is part of what Visy Executive Chairman Anthony Pratt calls his commitment to invest $2 billion during the 2020s to reduce landfilled material, cut emissions and “create thousands of green collar Australian manufacturing jobs.”

“This is a very important day for our company because we’re not only manufacturers, we’re actually in the landfill avoidance business, which is good for greenhouse gas reduction as well, because as things decay in landfill they produce methane gas, which is 84 times worse for climate change than carbon dioxide,” Pratt said at the event. “So, recycling is an important weapon against climate change.”

Pratt said a drum pulper system installed in Coolaroo was an Australian first and “represented the most advanced paper recycling technology in the world.”

According to Visy, it means that any piece of scrap paper that goes into a curbside recycling bin in Victoria now has the capacity to be recycled into new packaging in Victoria; it never has to be landfilled or exported.

“It will double Visy’s curbside recycling capability in Victoria, diverting up to 180,000 metric tons of paper and cardboard annually from Victoria’s landfills or exports—the equivalent of approximately an extra 400 Olympic swimming pools," Pratt said of the upgraded facility.

Visy says it will recycle and remanufacture inbound scrap paper and cardboard into 100 percent-recycled-content paper and corrugated packaging for pizza boxes, the agricultural sector and Victoria’s favorite food and beverage brands.

“We’ve truly closed the loop on paper and cardboard recycling, so put your used pizza box in the recycle bin and we’ll make another box out of it,” Pratt said.

The newly installed drum pulper was made possible in part by co-investment from the Victorian and federal governments.

The company says its latest investment brings its total cumulative investment in Australia to more than $10 billion.