ALPLA invests €60 million in PET recycling plant in Durban, South Africa

ALPLA, a packaging and recycling specialist, is building a state-of-the-art recycling plant in Ballito, a coastal town north of Durban, South Africa.

The plant will produce 35,000 tonnes of recycled PET material per year from 2025 and marks the company's entry into the African recycling market. Construction started in summer 2023 and is expected to be completed in autumn 2024. ALPLA is investing around €60 million in building its first own recycling plant in Southern Africa.

ALPLA Group is strengthening its commitment in Southern Africa. Following the opening of its new headquarters in Lanseria, near Johannesburg, in autumn 2022, the international company is now announcing the construction of its first own recycling plant in South Africa. By autumn 2024, a modern recycling plant for used PET bottles will be built on a 90,000 m2 site in Ballito, near Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.

This is the first investment in a food-grade PET recycling facility in South Africa's second most populous province and an important investment for the region. In the future, nearly 60,000 tonnes of PET bottles will be recycled each year and 35,000 tonnes of mechanically recycled rPET flakes and granules will be produced from them, most of which will be processed by ALPLA to produce its own bottles.

"Our goal is to achieve a bottle-to-bottle cycle at the event location. In this way, as a recycler and producer, we can ensure a global supply of safe, affordable and sustainable packaging while raising awareness of recyclable materials," emphasizes Philipp Lehner, CEO of ALPLA.

The new plant will increase the annual production capacity of rPET (recycled PET) to approximately 238,000 tonnes and rHDPE (recycled HDPE) to approximately 74,000 tonnes across all ALPLA recycling companies and cooperatives.