Less than three months after closing its recycling plant in Riverbank, Calif., plastics recycler Eco2 Plastics Inc. has filed for bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy petition, filed Nov. 25 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco, listed assets of $1.7 million and debt of $6.4 million.
The company said it was unable to find financing or investors to continue its operations. In the first nine months of 2009, Eco2 lost $20.7 million on $3 million in sales, bringing its losses in the past 53/4 years to nearly $125.5 million.
The company — which had developed a water-free technology to recycle PET — laid off 47 of its 58 employees and shuttered its plant on Sept. 8.
At that time, the Menlo Park company said that it hoped to regroup and open a new plant, most likely in northern California, but that it needed to raise $4 million to do that.
The company had expected to begin commercial-scale production of recycled PET flake this past June, but it was unable to make enough process improvements to make that a reality.
“We believe that Chapter 11 is necessary to restructure the company's outstanding debt and establish a sustainable, long-term capital structure for the business,” said Rod Rougelot, CEO of Eco2, in the bankruptcy filing.
“While we have worked tirelessly during the past several months to develop our new production facility plans, address our existing financial obligations and seek further funding, the company has concluded that it will be unable to secure the financing it requires, in the absence of a Chapter 11 filing that will clean up the company's balance sheet,” he said.
Formed in 2000, Eco2 had spent the past five years trying to make its water-free recycling technology commercially successful. The firm in early November received a Popular Science Best of What's New Award for the waterless process.
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