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July 08, 2015 02:00 AM

Long Island company boosts PET recycling output

Jim Johnson
Staff Writer
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    PQ Recycling LLC
    The sorting line at PQ Recycling LLC.

    A once-closed plastics recycling plant on Long Island has increased output by more than 60 percent during the past couple of years under new ownership that sees the potential for even more growth.

    The former Pure Tech Recycling LLC facility in Farmingdale, N.Y., was purchased by PolyQuest Inc. back in 2013 and renamed PQ Recycling LLC.

    These days, PQ Recycling CEO Tod Durst said, annual output is about 36 million pounds at the site that's operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

    PQ Recycling takes in PET bottles collected in New York and nearby states through bottle bill return programs, including a large amount returned through reverse vending machines.

    Relying, for the most part, on this source gives PQ Recycling a clean, homogeneous recycling stream that allows the company to produce flake that can be used for food grade applications.

    Making an investment on Long Island made sense for PolyQuest, which calls itself North America's largest distributor of PET resins.

    “Part of our portfolio is recycled PET. We have approximately over 100 million pounds a year of rPET pelletization capacity. And for a good portion of that is post consumer. So for a long time, we had been buying washed post-consumer flake on the market, including from Pure Tech over the years,” Durst said.

    PQ Recycling LLC

    PolyQuest makes recycled PET pellets from the flake sourced from PQ Recycling.

    “We had always looked for the opportunity to backwards integrate. We had looked at doing it ourselves. But then when the opportunity came out to basically buy that facility and that business there, we jumped on it and provide a step backwards in the chain,” he said.

    PQ Recycling's location on Long Island means the facility can take advantage of New York's bottle bill as well as those in nearby states including Connecticut and Massachusetts. That means supply is good.

    PolyQuest makes recycled PET pellets from the Farmingdale flake at its facility in Darlington, S.C. The company also sells clean flake.

    “It took us one step closer to the source of the material, the feedstock, and in this case, the bales,” Durst said about the decision to buy the Farmingdale site. “Secondly, it gave us greater control over the quality of the product that we were buying.

    “There's some cost advantages that can be gained by backward integrating that further step. That was really our motivation,” he said. “We liked the deposit business, quite honestly. We liked the cleanliness of the stream. We liked how more controlled it is coming from a single-stream source.”

    George Smilow is chief operating officer at PQ Recycling and has worked at the facility for more than 20 years under several owners.

    “We have succeeded in improving, enhancing the throughput and the quality as well. We were able to prove that with several customers that acknowledged they had seen an improvement in the flake quality,” he said.

    About 35 people now work at the plant, an increase of about 15 to 20 percent since improvements were made under PolyQuest's ownership, said Smilow, who has worked at the plant since 1994.

    The site now measures about 72,000 square feet, an increase of about 10,000 square feet since the ownership change a couple of years ago. Smilow sees the opportunity to expand even more as time goes on.

    “I think if we look back at the history of that facility, it's always been known as a provider of high-quality, clean flake to the industry for a very long time. We've been able to not only maintain the quality of that flake, but also improve it while simultaneously increasing the capacity of that, which is a difficult thing to do,” Durst said.

    Smilow also said having PolyQuest as PQ Recycling's owner means past concerns from local suppliers about the viability of the operation have been alleviated.

    The Farmingdale facility dates back to 1992 but had shut down under Pure Tech in 2012 after being sued by Coca-Cola Co. for breach of contract for allegedly failing to pay the principal on a loan. PolyQuest then stepped in to buy the closed site from Pure Tech in 2013.

    “When you marry PQ Recycling with PolyQuest's capabilities, you certainly have a broad portfolio of products and businesses in which we operate,” said Durst, also an executive vice president with PolyQuest. “I think that was probably one of the reasons we've been successful.”

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