To meet growing demand for plastic lumber decking and other products, Advanced Environ-mental Recycling Technologies Inc. will earmark all the plastic scrap it has been processing and selling to outside sources for internal use. In a restructuring announcement Feb. 27, the Springdale, Ark., company said it plans to reduce costs and streamline overhead by increasing production of its composite building materials.
AERT also will phase out $1 million per year in outside, third-party sales of recycled high and linear low density polyethylene. Instead, the plastic will be used internally to make the company's composite products, such as door and window profiles, and dimensional plastic lumber building materials.
``This is very exciting to us,'' said Joe Brooks, president of the company.
``The demand for the decking composite material in particular has been very strong, and essentially we would be giving up about $1 million in plastics sales outside for what might be $4 million in composite sales.''
AERT is sole supplier to Weyerhauser Corp. of that company's Choicedek-brand dimensional plastic lumber.
It also manufactures Moisture-shield and Lifecycle brands of plastic composite building materials.
``By focusing on composite building materials, we will be able to reduce costs and overhead previously associated with maintaining two separate business segments,'' Brooks said.
``The building material lines are gaining more acceptance every day, and this will help us meet the supply.''
To facilitate the increased composites output, the company will add a third extrusion line to its composites facility in Junction, Texas.
He said the line should be operating by May 1.
The company also will move its corporate headquarters from Springdale to its facility in Rogers, Ark., where it operates a recycling line for post-consumer and post-industrial HDPE and LLDPE.
The plant previously produced material for internal use and outside sales before the restructuring.
``We anticipate adding a second reclaim line at Rogers, which will boost the production there from about 10 million to 12 million pounds per year to about 20 million,'' Brooks said. ``This would help us furnish the composite plant with enough material to meet demands.''
Later in the year, after the restructuring is complete and production is increased, the company will look for a site for a second composites plant, Brooks said.
He chose not to disclose where the plant might be located.
