The Mexican company Alpek announced the acquisition of CarbonLITE’s PET recycling and pelletizing plant in Pennsylvania, United States, for 96 million dollars, bringing the company’s installed PET recycling capacity to 394,000 tons, becoming the largest PET recycler in the region.
“Alpek focused on CarbonLITE’s Reading plant as it is fully equipped with new machinery, including bottle handling systems on arrival, washing and solid state polymerization (” SSP “), which allow the production of grade pellets. food and are required for bottle-to-bottle recycling, ”the company reported in a statement sent to the Mexican Stock Exchange.
The site has a bottle-to-flake capacity of 115,000 tons and a flake-to-pellet capacity of 49,000 tons, making it the largest integrated PET recycling plant in the Americas. The site is expected to complete its overhaul process and start production during the third quarter of this year.
With this purchase, the petrochemical company – a subsidiary of the Alfa conglomerate – achieves the goal of supplying customers who want it with 25% recycled PET content by 2025.
“We are very excited to incorporate the Reading site into our portfolio and its collaborators into our family,” said José de Jesús Valdez, CEO of Alpek, quoted in the document.
“Through this transaction, we continue to focus our portfolio towards the circular economy, helping our clients meet their recycled content goals ahead of schedule.”
The company already operates 32 plants in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom. In 2020, it recorded revenues of $ 5.326 billion.
