Nampak Announces Bottle-to-Bottle Plant Investment

The plant, which the company aims to have operational by the end of 2008, will produce up to 13,000 tonnes of food grade recycled HDPE (rHDPE) per year.

25/01/2008 Nampak Plastics will become the UK’s first true ’closed loop’ plastic packaging recycler following the announcement that the company is to make a multi-million pound investment in its own reprocessing plant in the North East of England. Nampak, which is one of the largest producers of HDPE plastic milk bottles in the UK, will use the output of the plant to help it in its drive to produce 30% recycled content milk bottles by 2009.

The plant, which the company aims to have operational by the end of 2008, will produce up to 13,000 tonnes of food grade recycled HDPE (rHDPE) per year. Nampak will use the reprocessing technology that it helped to develop with Wrap, Dairy Crest, M&S and Nextek. The collaboration led to the production of the world’s first recycled content HDPE bottle, which is now stocked in M&S stores, and has won a series of environmental and packaging awards.

The HDPE will be supplied by waste management companies from domestic waste and the reprocessed material will be used in Nampak’s own UK manufacturing operations to contribute towards the recycled content in its HDPE milk bottles. The company currently produces 2 billion bottles a year.