The company reprocesses mixed rigid plastics from the municipal waste stream, as well as constructionand post-consumer mixed plastic waste and creates a plywood substitute known as EcoSheet to be used in the construction sector.
2K began commissioning and production at its plant, which is situated a stone’s throw from Luton Airport, in November and has already begun to produce EcoSheet.
The firm intends to install further sorting capacity and negotiate “teething issues” before achieving its 25,000 tonnes-a-year capacity by the end of March.
Commenting on the plant, Omer Kutluoglu, chief executive and co-founder of 2K, told letsrecycle.com: “It has moved on quite a lot. It is a sequence of adjustments and it has taken us about one and a half years to get that right. Our first mass production line was switched on in November and it is now coming towards capacity operations.”
Feedstock
Discussing feedstock for the plant, Mr Kutluoglu highlighted the range of inputs for the Luton plant.
He said: “At the moment we are majoring on four areas. We are majoring on WEEE [waste electrical and electronic equipment], construction waste, household waste and recycling centres- and added onto that ASR, auto shredder residues. And, also post consumer waste from MRFs and secondary processors.”
Once the plant is fully operational it will produce 2,000 EcoSheets each day from assorted feedstock. It is currently producing 500 sheets each day. 2K said it had met with a “positive reception” from the construction sector for the material, which is primarily used as hoarding.
The company received £5 million in finance from Sevenoaks-based investment firm Foresight Group to help establish the plant in January 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mixed plastic
Mr Kutluoglu said that the plant would help “provide a solution” for the enduring issue of mixed plastic reprocessing. At present, Mr Kutluoglu said, only 6% of plastic waste is fully recycled in the UK and plants such as 2K’s are intended to help address the remaining fraction.
“The main message from our point of view, that we want to send out, is that there is a solution to this mixed plastic issue,” he said. “For too long everyone has said there is no solution and we will need to send it to China and that is that but we have a way for material to be reused and reused here in this country.”
He added that the firm was focussing its efforts on developing the Luton plant and, once this was completed, it could potentially use it as a “template model” to develop sites across the UK.
The March date proposed for 2K Manufacturing to begin processing at its capacity would coincide with the start of operations at Biffa Polymer’s mixed plastic recycling facility in Redcar, which is also intended to sort and reprocess 25,000 tonnes of material when it becomes fully operational (see letsrecycle.com story).
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