Revalyu Resources (revalyu), a chemical PET recycling company, has announced that it will invest $50 million during the initial phase of its strategic expansion in its first facility in the USA.
The location for its new plant will be in Statesboro, Georgia where ground-breaking will take place in the first half of 2023 and commissioning of the facility is planned for 2024.
The 43-acre Statesboro site will employ approximately 70 people. When the first phase is completed, the company claims that the plant will be able to recycle and process over 225,000 pounds per day of used PET (polyester) waste into sustainable PET polymers (esters) and rPET chips. In further expansion, the plant will have a capacity of up to 450,000 pounds.
Using chemical recycling technology, revalyu claims to already have recycled over six billion bottles. The recycling process extracts impurities efficiently and aims to deliver recycled PET of highest purity. The company says the process uses 91% less energy and 67% less water than conventional polyester processes.
According to the company, Customer applications have shown that the quality of recycled PET from plastic bottles is equivalent to that of virgin PET and can be used as a direct replacement.
Once converted into high quality recycled PET, revalyu claims its rPET chips can be used to produce any kind of sustainable PET product. Currently, it is mostly used in the textile industry for applications such as seamless knitting, weaving, denim, automotive, furniture or technical textiles.
Jan van Kisfeld, Managing Director of revalyu said: “We thank all our US customers, partners, and the Statesboro community for their support, trust, and confidence in us. Expanding our operations to the US is an important milestone for our global expansion strategy. It brings us closer to our target of recycling more than two million pounds of used PET bottles per day by 2026 and contributes to solving the plastic waste problem.”
Dr. Vivek Tandon, Founder of revalyu added: “The recycling process is unique and delivers the world’s cleanest, highest quality and most sustainable polyester products to our customers. We have commercialized a breakthrough and environmentally sustainable technology and revalyu will become the leading global brand for recycling polyester. We continue to seek strong partners globally who wish to work with us on the global roll out of this technology”,
Benjy Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of the Development Authority of Bulloch County, commented: "Our community is very excited to welcome revalyu to Statesboro-Bulloch County. revalyu has a respected reputation for their plastics recycling process and the positive effects it will have on the environment. We are very excited that our region will be the first U.S. site for their truly innovative technology.”