At the heart of the food-grade plastic push

Josh Brooks, Packaging News, 25 November 2008

 

In the UK, plastic recyclate has been unsuitable for the hygiene-intensive world of food packaging, but all that is set to change with the opening of Closed Loop's behemoth London plant, says Josh Brook

 

The drizzly docks of Dagenham, on the cusp between east London proper and the start of the Thames estuary, could never be described as one of the capital's beauty spots. But visitors would be wrong to assume that the grey industrial units that characterise the area, once best known as the location of car manufacturer Ford's UK factory, are just churning out greenhouse gases to spoil the city's environment.

 

In fact, one of the leading lights of plastic packaging's eco-revolution has made Dagenham docks its home. In one of those newly built units, Closed Loop London will, any day now, start up a production line that will recycle plastic bottles into material that can be used again in food packaging. It's a huge leap forward – until now, plastic recyclate produced in this country has only been suitable for less hygiene-intensive uses such as in construction or non-food packaging.

 

Food-grade recycled PET and HDPE are being taken very seriously. Major bottle producers and buyers including Coca-Cola, Nampak Plastics and Marks & Spencer are among buyers of Closed Loop's material. Other recyclers, most notably AWS Ecoplastics, are making similar strides to Closed Loop. And major brands such as smoothie maker Innocent Drinks and Ribena, owned by Procter & Gamble, have already switched to bottles made from recycled PET sourced outside the UK.

 

Strength to strength

When I visit Dagenham, Chris Dow, Closed Loop's hugely enthusiastic managing director, is in a good mood. He has just received an inquiry about using recycled PET bottles from a UK-based wine producer. "This is great," he says, showing me his Blackberry. "It goes to show rPET has a lot to look forward to. I'm bloody excited to be part of it."

 

Dow has every reason to be feeling pleased with himself. The company has just been voted UK Waste Management Company of the Year by readers of Packaging News. The £12m Dagenham factory is very nearly ready to begin production – all its 35,000-tonne annual output is sold already. What's more, 70% of the output of the second planned site in Deeside, north Wales, is already sold, too.

 

The start of production at Closed Loop London is a milestone in the firm's history and Dow's plans. In his native Australia, Closed Loop began life as part of packaging giant Visy's events division. Following a buyout, the firm came to prominence at the 2000 Sydney Olympics when it collected and recycled the athletes' drinks bottles.

 

By 2004, the company was ready to expand into the UK market and, in March of that year, Dow founded the UK business. Backing from private equity eco-investor Foresight was secured at the start of 2007, and the company got the keys to the Dagenham building in January this year.

 

Next on the agenda is to find a site for a third factory. Dow says he is looking in Scotland, the north-east and the Midlands. Start-up in Deeside is planned for late 2009. With the third factory and another two planned, how far can plastics recycling go? "If the bottles are there and we can keep selling as we are, we will keep building. The UK is at 34% [collection of PET

and HDPE bottles] now. I can see us getting to 70%," he predicts. "In fact, you can see the day when you have just a wet bin in the kitchen and one for everything else."

 

Today, though, Dow is more concerned with the coming start-up of the Dagenham plant with its array of giant conveyors, trammels, plastics sorters, cutters, furnaces and cleaners. Walking around the plant, Dow's fascination with the process becomes evident – his description of a plastic bottle's journey from its arrival in a bale of HDPE or PET bottles to its departure as thousands of tiny chips of food-grade plastic is peppered with colourful language and the odd "wow!".

 

He says that visitors, too, often share his excitement – particularly among packaging designers, who, he says, are key to the whole industry's environmental struggle. "We've had designers come here who have been moved by the experience," he says. "That's what will help us win the war."

 

Looking ahead

Currently, the other war in recycling is the collapse in prices for recyclable waste. In the case of plastics, the drop this year has been triggered by a collapse in demand from China.

 

This could be seen as good news for Closed Loop – after all, input prices are rock-bottom – but Dow argues that continued low prices are not healthy for anyone in the recycling market.

 

He also takes a philosophical view where many have cried scandal at the UK recycling market's reliance on sales to the Far East. "China has given the UK the opportunity to develop its infrastructure [for collecting plastics] in a rational manner," he says. "It's given us time. But the crucial thing is that in the future every country will have to take responsibility for its own waste."

 

A third challenge, Dow says, is the growth in the use of plastics based either on additives or on GM crops – especially PLA bottles, which, he claims, create black specks if they manage to make their way through a PET or HDPE recycling plant and can weaken the polymer. "PVC and PLA both have a place but it's not in the bottle market," he says. "The only home for PLA bottles is in landfill."

 

There will be those who disagree with Dow on this last point. But it's hard to argue with his energy for and commitment to developing the plastics recycling infrastructure. And if he goes ahead with all five factories, perhaps a little bit more of the UK's environment will be kept a little bit more beautiful. Just don't expect the buildings to be pretty.