South Africa Extrupet Group, South Africa’s first and largest recycling operation for post-consumer PET bottles, has ordered a second Starlinger PET recycling line to meet the country’s growing demand for rPET.
Extrupet’s PhoenixPET plant, located in Wadeville just east of Johannesburg, converts more than 2.5 million PET bottles per day into high-quality flakes and pellets.
Recycling activities at Extrupet developed around the turn of the millennium out of the necessity to put a stop to the landfilling of PET bottles. The company set up a recycling plant and in 2014 added a Starlinger recoSTAR PET recycling line.
Over the past years, the demand for recycled material has been steadily growing, to a point where Extrupet started investigating the purchase of a second recycling machine. The new Starlinger line, a recoSTAR PET 165 HC iV+ that will be delivered early next year, will significantly increase the recycling capacity of its South African factory. The new line will achieve a throughput of around 1,900 kg/h, and will be equipped with a larger solid-state polycondensation unit to further increase the cleaning efficiency.
Extrupet’s group director, Ravi Chanrai, stated that in addition to the upcoming expansion in South Africa, the group also plans to increase the capacity of its Nigerian recycling operations.