ALPLA acquires German PET recycler

The ALPLA Group is acquiring BTB PET-Recycling based in Bad Salzuflen. The company turns PET bottles into recycled material predominantly for its closed-loop bottle-to-bottle packaging cycle.

BTB pre-sorts, shreds, washes and re-sorts the input material, which is then melted down in an extrusion process and turned into pellet form, resulting in valuable food-grade rPET. The processing volume is around 20,000 tonnes of PET bottles each year.

Georg Lässer, Head of Corporate Recycling at ALPLA, said: “BTB produces highly efficiently, using established technology. The team in Bad Salzuflen is highly motivated and does a fantastic job. For us, buying this company is an investment in the future, enabling us to increase the existing capacities and further strengthen the bottle-to-bottle loop.”

Georg Pescher, MD ALPLA Germany, added: “By acquiring BTB, we are investing in a very structured company which has been operating successfully within the local circular economy for years, and which is already supplying our preform business in Germany with rPET.”

The parties signed the contract on 28 September 2021. They have agreed not to disclose the purchase price or any further details.

ALPLA and its partners recently announced the founding of the joint venture PET Recycling Team Targu Mures for the recycling of post-consumer PET bottles in Romania. The target is annual production of 15,000 tonnes of food-grade rPET to strengthen the local materials cycle in Central and South-Eastern Europe. In the UK, ALPLA has been co-operating with the British waste management company Biffa and sources food-grade rPET pellets from the Biffa recycling plant. With this collaboration, ALPLA is increasing the proportion of British recyclate used to manufacture packaging in the UK. ALPLA also recently announced a similar acquisition of Spain-based bottle manufacturer Plastisax.

In early 2021, the ALPLA Group announced that it would invest an average of €50m a year until 2025 in the ongoing expansion of its recycling activities. In particular, it plans to globalise its activities in the area of high-quality recyclates in order to close the materials cycle in as many regions as possible. In all, the annual capacity of the ALPLA recycling companies, joint ventures and partnerships amounts to approximately 130,000 tonnes of PET and 60,000 tonnes of PE.