Biffa acquired the site, which it said was “Scotland’s only postconsumer plastics recycling facility”, in 2021 from Green Circle Polymers for £10 million (see letsrecycle.com story).
The facility in Grangemouth had the capacity to process 50,000 tonnes of plastic a year, including PET, HDPE, natural and jazz and polypropylene.
After winning a 10-year contract to provide logistics, sorting and counting services for the Scottish DRS in July 2022, Biffa announced two months later that the former Green Circle premises was to be closed an upgraded (see letsrecycle.com story).
This formed part of the £80 million Biffa said it was to invest in the Scottish scheme.
However, following the scheme’s collapse in June 2023 (see letsrecycle.com story) and a general downturn in the prices for recycled plastic, the facility has remained shut, with question marks over its future.
A Biffa spokesperson told letsrecycle.com that it is “currently exploring a number of different options” for the site, but said “at this stage it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment further.”
Works
As part of the revamp of the site, Biffa was in the process of replacing the roof of the building and also planned to build a new weighbridge and offices.
The company was also planning to use noise-dampening materials to construct the facility and install new machinery to separate and count bottles and cans.
The Grangemouth facility was due to form part of a network of facilities that will count, sort and bale all the plastic, glass and aluminium drinks containers collected through the scheme. The material was then due to be sold to be recycled back into bottles and cans.
The Grangemouth revamp was due to create 130 jobs, from operatives and drivers, to administrators, supervisors and managers.
This was to sit alongside multi-million pound plans for counting and baling plants in Aberdeen, Kelso and Motherwell, with facilities planned across the country. The future of these sites is also still undecided.
Biffa Waste Services is owed £65 million by Circularity Scotland, the industry-led group set up to run the Scottish DRS. Administrator documents for the body said unsecured creditors are likely to receive a “nominal sum” (see letsrecycle.com story).
The video from CK International below shows various machinery at the Grangemouth facility in a video posted by CK International in 2019.
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