Last week, JFC Manufacturing of Ireland revealed its acquisition earlier this year of UK plastic bottles recycler Delleve and its sister company Reprise, renaming the recycling company JFC-Delleve (see letsrecycle.com story).
The new sorting facility will be built on JFC-Delleve's site in St Helens where Reprise has also been relocated from Bold near Warrington. JFC plans to invest about 3 million in addition to the WRAP capital grant into new waste plastic processing machinery and the relocation of Reprise's operations.
When fully operational, the new plant will process 20,000 tonnes of post-consumer plastic bottles a year, cleaning them and sorting them into polymer types for recycling.
The project is expected to enable more local authorities to collect plastic bottles through kerbside or bring bank schemes without having to invest in expensive automated or manual sorting equipment. JFC-Delleve sees the urban areas of the North West England as a good source of materials.
In the past, Delleve has been outspoken over the lack of financial support from WRAP for the plastics recycling industry in the UK.
However, Delleve has also worked with WRAP's Business Development Service, which helped the plastics recycler develop a business plan with the expectation of 1.2 million investment from a private investor. It is not known whether this investor was JFC Manufacturing.
The award of the bottle sorting grant is expected to come as something of a relief to WRAP, which has been looking to invest in expanding the UK's plastic sorting capacity since it originally opened the grant to applications in February 2002. It had planned for a new sorting plant to come on stream in 2003 and to operate at full capacity by 2005 but, due to complications, is now running nearly a year late.
The market development agency did originally enter negotiations with their original preferred bidder Cleanaway, which later withdrew its application.
Cleanaway was looking to build a plastic bottle sorting plant at its materials recycling facility at Rainham in Essex. But the waste management company is believed to have pulled out over concerns that there would not be enough material to feed the plant.
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