New £15M Plastic Recycling Facility in Seaham Gets Council Nod

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The Durham County Council has granted planning approval to plans submitted by the U.K.-headquartered waste management major Biffa to build a modern plastic recycling facility near Seaham.

The facility will be built in a vacant warehouse at the Foxcover Industrial Estate, close to the A182 Seaham Link Road,at an expense of nearly £15-million. The construction is expected to begin this summer. Biffa plans to conduct the first commissioning trials by end-2019. The facility will result in creation of nearly 70 new full-time jobs in the region.

The proposed plant will have a processing capacity of more than 1 billion plastic bottles per year. It will produce food-grade PET flake, which in turn will be used in the manufacture of new bottles and food trays. The Seaham facility will complement Biffa’s Redcar polymer processing facility which produces food-grade rHDPE plastic, which are mainly used to manufacture plastic milk bottles. According to Biffa, the new plant is expected to double the company’s total plastic bottle recycling capacity.

Mick Davis, managing director of resource, recovery and treatment at Biffa noted that out of the estimated 13.5 billion plastic bottles consumed by the U.K. in a year, only 50% are re-processed, while the remaining bottles are either exported or diverted into landfills. The new site offers exciting opportunity to support the government’s long-term plans to maximize re-use of plastics, Davis added.