Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL) has announced the official opening of its PETValue bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in the Philippines, in partnership with Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines – the bottling arm of Coca-Cola in the country.
The plant is IVL’s, a global sustainable chemical company, latest recycled PET facility as the global integrated petrochemicals company says it is building on its position as the world’s “largest producer” of recycled resin used in plastic beverage bottles.
PETValue Philippines, located in General Trias in Cavite Province south of Manila, is the country’s first food-grade, bottle-to-bottle recycling facility, and the largest in the Philippines, IVL says.
The facility was built by IVL in partnership with Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines, Inc. in accord with The Coca-Cola Company’s “World Without Waste” program to collect and recycle the equivalent of every bottle it sells by 2030.
In 2020, we signed a joint venture agreement with Coca-Cola to build a state-of-the-art recycling plant in the Philippines.
As a result of the joint venture with Coca-Cola, IVL says it will recycle about 2 billion additional used PET (polyethene terephthalate) plastic bottles in the Philippines every year and create about 200 new local jobs. The plant will wash and shred post-consumer bottles into flakes to produce recycled PET resin that is suitable for use in food-contact applications.
IVL says it has already surpassed the halfway milestone towards meeting its 2025 target of increasing its recycling capacity to 750,000 tons per year. The company continues that it is investing US$1.5 billion globally to expand recycling facilities and sustainable production, including a new ambition to reach post-consumer PET bale input of 1,500,000 tons per year by 2030.
PETValue will introduce the most advanced technology and infrastructure in the Philippines, helping to improve collection and recycling rates and prevent leakage into waterways, IVL says. The company continues that the new plant will encourage a more robust waste value chain to help address the growing post-consumer waste management problem in the Philippines.
The “unique” PET plastic used in soft drinks and water bottles is 100% recyclable and the most collected plastic packaging in the world, IVL says, global brands including Coca-Cola is using more recycled plastic in their bottles to close the loop and “deliver a circular economy”.
By the end of this year, we will have increased our recycling capacity to more than 375,000 tons.
Chairman of ESG Council at Indorama Ventures, Mr Yash Lohia, said, “By the end of this year, we will have increased our recycling capacity to more than 375,000 tons.
“In 2021, we acquired a PET recycling plant in Texas and announced plans to build a new facility in Indonesia. In 2020, we signed a joint venture agreement with Coca-Cola to build a state-of-the-art recycling plant in the Philippines, which culminated in today’s announcement. In the same year, we also acquired recycling plants in Brazil and two in Poland.
“This is to be celebrated given the challenging pandemic environment. These seven plants will join a family of existing recycling sites in Alabama, Ireland, two in France and the Netherlands.”