THE new recycling plant established by Hosaf at Alrode, in Alberton, is opening a whole new sector for the company.

The plant, operated by new company Hosaf Recycling, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hosaf Fibres, itself a part of Claas Daun’s JSE Securities Exchange-listed Kap International Holdings, recycles bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Or, to put it in everyday terms, plastic cold-drink bottles.

“Hitherto, recycling wasn’t part of our core business: we were a textiles and packaging manufacturing company; but this is a new and a growth sector for us and a growth sector for South Africa which will bring great benefits to the country,” asserts Hosaf Recycling MD Peter White.

Recycling PET will both reduce demand on the country’s landfill waste sites and reduce imports of the compound’s raw materials.

The company’s initial target is to produce 10 000 t/y of recycled PET (this would require the consumption of about 12 000 t/y of PET bottles).

“At present, this figure is about the limit of Hosaf’s internal usage of recycled PET,” he explains. All of this would be fed to Hosaf Fibres.

“We expect to achieve this in 12 to 24 months, and it would amount to some 33% of Hosaf Fibres’ total polymer supply for textile fibre,” he reveals.

But that will, it is hoped, be only the beginning.

“In South Africa, about 85 000 t/y of PET bottles are used, of which, until now, only some 7 000 t/y have been recycled; but the PET industry has a target of increasing the percentage of material recycled up to 20% to 25% within the next three to four years,” he highlights.

“We hope to supply companies in sectors other than textiles (that is, areas in which Hosaf Fibres is not involved) with recycled PET,” states White.

“We’re already getting expressions of interest from packaging companies,” he reports.

It is easiest to recycle PET into fibres; in increasing order of difficulty (each requiring higher and higher quality) are the production of polyester sheeting, PET bottles, and, at the very top, polyester engineering plastics.

“The target with this plant is to get the quality right, and we believe that, with the technology we are using, we’ll get that quality,” he asserts.

“Except for one extruder, everything in this plant is new,” highlights White.

“The technology is not, in global terms, new, but it is new to South Africa and, we believe, the Southern Hemisphere,” he says. “In the second phase of this project we aim to get the product quality good enough to be used to again make bottles,” he affirms.