Massive PET Recycling Facility Announces Grand Opening

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The new plastics recycling facility in Vernon, California by rPlanet Earth has started operations. The official grand opening ceremony of the facility was held on Oct. 11. The plant featuring most modern equipment and techniques is expected to provide big boost to plastics recycling capacity in southern California.

The announcement towards construction of the 302,000-square-foot facility came almost year before. Subsequently, the company had invested substantial sums of money amounting to approximately $100 million. The company had received financing from various public and private sources. The plant is estimated to have a processing capacity of up to 38,000 tonnes of food and drink packaging per year. According to rPlanet Earth press release, the new plant will be capable of producing nearly 80 million pounds of finished products per annum.

The state-of-the-art facility features bottle-grade flake production system by Krones of Germany and front-end bottle sorting system by Bulk Handling Systems (BHS). It employs optical and AI sorting technologies to segregate metals, mixed plastics and colored PET. The plant promises lowest carbon footprint in the entire marketplace, due to the modern systems in place.

The extrusion lines of the plant are provided by York, Pa.-based Graham Engineering. It uses two Lyle brand machines for thermoforming. The thermoformed products thus produced by the plant include drinking cups, clamshell co0ntainers etc.