Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL), the world’s largest producer of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for beverage bottles, completed a deal for an 85% equity stake in Czech Republic-based PET plastic recycler, UCY Polymers CZ s.r.o. (UCY), boosting the country and Europe’s plastic collection and recycling ambitions.As a result of the investment, IVL will recycle about 1.12 B additional post-consumer PET plastic bottles in the Czech Republic every year by 2025, increasing the total bottles recycled by UCY across the Czech Republic, Germany and Central Europe to 1.6 B bottles per year. IVL is investing $1.5 B globally to expand recycling facilities and sustainable production, including boosting its recycling capacity to 750,000 tpy by 2025.

UCY is a strategic fit for IVL as a backward integration into the company’s expanding recycled PET footprint in Europe and across the world to secure feedstock for recycled PET products. UCY can produce 40,000 t of recycled PET flakes per year. IVL will develop UCY to serve the increasing demand for recycled PET in Europe.

UCY will work with IVL’s existing PET flake production facilities in the region. These provide the washed and shredded post-consumer bottles as PET flake feedstock to produce recycled PET resin that is suitable for food contact use. PET is fully recyclable and the most collected and recycled plastic packaging in Europe.

D K Agarwal, CEO and CFO at Indorama Ventures, said: “IVL will use our know-how to grow capacity and recycle more and more bottles. As part of our commitment to sustainability and the circular economy, we are building the recycling infrastructure needed to divert PET waste from the environment. By recycling post-consumer PET bottles into new bottles, we give waste an economic value. This drives improvements in waste collection systems, meaning less waste and a cleaner environment.”

Yash Lohia, Chairman of ESG Council at Indorama Ventures, said: “Our partnership will strengthen the recycling ecosystem in the Czech Republic. This growth is made possible because of our customers’ commitment to bottle-to-bottle recycling, which allows us to build the recycling infrastructure Europe needs.”

Maximilian Josef Söllner, CEO, UCY, said, “We look forward to adding our robust supply of post-consumer bottles, well-established technology and proven management team to IVL. Expanding our capacity by 2025 means an extra 896 MM bottles will be recycled in our facilities.”