The £6 million investment – £1 million from the Sustainable Technology Fund (STF) and £5 million from private investment company Robeco – will go towards the construction of a separate building for its food grade line, having used previous investments to increase the plant's capacity to 100,000 tonnes of mixed bottles annually.
In November last year, AWS outlined its 12 month expansion plan to allow it to recycling plastic bottles into food plastic packaging and began making equipment alterations with the introduction of an additional sorting line, hot washes and extrusion units (see letsreycle.com story).
The firm, which currently produces PET and HDPE flake for customers in Europe and the Far East, also aims to use the expansion to help it produce high quality ‘superclean' plastic flakes.
STF
Sam Richardson, investment director at STF, said: “AWS is a profitable company with a huge opportunity to lead the UK market in food grade recycled plastics. There are significant drivers working in its favour, including customer demand on drinks companies to use more recycled content in their bottles along with regulatory pressure to reduce materials going to landfill.”
STF, which is a £30 million fund managed by technological venture capital firm E-Synergy, invested £1.5 million in the plastic recycler in January, when E-Synergy chief executive Andrew Stevenson also joined the board of AWS as an investor director (see letsrecycle.com story).
Meanwhile, investment Robeco, which has total assets under management of around €146 billion (£115.7 billion), has invested its share as part of its Clean tech Private Equity II fund.
Managing director of AWS Ecoplastics, Jonathan Short, said: “I am delighted to secure this round of equity finance so soon after the round towards the end of last year. This demonstrates the faith the investors have in our management team and the market in which we work.”
Mr Richardson added: “AWS has proved itself capable of meeting challenging financial and operational targets and is now well advanced upgrading its plant in Lincolnshire.”
In addition to the investment, Tony Knox, founder and former chairman of Financial Dynamics, has been appointed to the post of chairman to oversee AWS's development.
Subscribe for free