Austrian packaging giant and recycler Alpla Werke Alwin Lehner GmbH & Co KG opened a 20 million euro ($22.9 million) high density polyethylene recycling plant in central Mexico Nov. 10 and promptly announced it will double the facility's capacity to 66.2 million pounds a year by the second half of 2022.
"We are seeing increasing momentum in the recycling market … and the demand from our customers in the region for post-consumer recycled materials is rising," Carlos Torres, Alpla's manager for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, said in a news release, explaining the planned rapid expansion.
Alpla announced that it would build the plant in Toluca, 40 miles west of the Mexican capital, in September 2020. The facility's current capacity is 15,000 metric tons (33.1 million pounds) a year of recycled HDPE, used mainly in the production of nonfood packaging, such as personal and household cleaning products.