Asahi & CCEP's new recycling facility to process 1b bottles per year

Asahi Beverages and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) have established the outline for an agreement with Cleanaway Australia and Pact Group and announced plans to develop a new Circular Plastics Australia (PET) recycling facility.

The location of the facility is expected to be determined in the coming months and construction will be completed by 2023. The facility will process the equivalent of around 1 billion bottles each year to produce over 20,000 tonnes of new recycled PET bottles and food packaging.  

This joint venture will provide an industry model for recycling solutions in Australia, incorporating this new facility as well as the Albury-Wodonga PET recycling facility currently under construction by Pact Group, Cleanaway and Asahi. This is due for completion later this year.

The agreement will significantly boost recycling by processing raw plastic material collected via Container Deposit Schemes and kerbside recycling state-of-the-art sorting, washing, decontamination and extrusion technology.

It will process the equivalent of around 1 billion bottles each year to produce over 20,000 tonnes of new recycled PET bottles and food packaging.

Group CEO and Managing Director from Pact Group, Sanjay Dayal said, “We are delighted to be able to bring a scaled cross-industry solution that solves for the local production of recycled resin. We are proud to have CCEP, Asahi Beverages and Cleanaway as partners creating a local circular economy. This partnership shows the value of a solution that works for industry and consumers. This is completely aligned to Pact’s strategy which is to lead the local circular economy through reuse, recycling, and packaging solutions”.

The cross-industry solution will support each organisation to achieve their sustainability goals:

• Cleanaway will provide available PET through its collection and sorting network
• Pact will provide technical and packaging expertise and CCEP
• Asahi Beverages and Pact will buy the recycled PET from the facility to use in their respective products
• The plant, when fully operational, will be run by Pact.

CCEP and Asahi Beverages have partnered to increase the production and availability of recycled PET resin in Australia and advance the cause of sustainability and recycling.

This proposed plant is an important step forward in creating a local plastics circular economy in Australia.

Peter West, CCEP Vice President and General Manager Australia, Pacific and Indonesia said, “This new joint venture will deliver a collaborative cross-industry solution to recycle the material that we use to produce our products. Together we can work towards creating a circular economy for PET within the beverages industry, ensuring that we are using more locally processed recycled content for the production of our bottles in Australia.”

Asahi Beverages Group CEO Robert Iervasi agreed, “It will help transform recycling in Australia by providing a new, local source of high-quality recycled PET. The building of this large rPET plant along with the facility in Albury-Wodonga is a major step towards helping us deliver a truly circular economy for our consumers.”