PlastiWeber tackles agricultural waste in Brazil, sees room to grow

PlastiWeber has been closing the loop for a long, long time.

And the Brazilian company is looking to significantly expand its ability to recapture, process and create new film products out of low and liner low density polyethylene film.

The Feliz, Brazil-based operation is tucked away in a small booth, but the firm has big plans to quadruple production during the next few years, according to PlastiWeber Industrial Director Leandro Weber.

He is part of the second generation of the Weber family that started PlastiWeber about 25 years ago, an operation that began after his parents saw a need to rescue used agricultural film in strawberry fields from improper disposal, burning and littering.

This company, born as a mom-and-pop business with a desire to stop plastics' negative impact on the environment, has grown over the years to now employ 250 people with an output of about 10,000 tons of new film goods each year.

"We are looking for partners. We already have a very good business due to the very high quality. But we also realize the world needs support, so we are looking for partners," said Giovani Otavio Rissi, a packaging consultant who works with the company.

PlastiWeber expects to expand the company by about 20 percent in 2022 with plans to dramatically increase production to 40,000 tons by 2025. But that kind of growth will require new customers and partnerships, and PlastiWeber is on the show floor promoting its message and looking for partners.

PlastiWeber has used the last 25 years to create a business by making incremental changes that have resulted in a modern integrated approach that collects used plastic films, processes them into pellets and then extrudes them into new products, the two men explained.

"There is an investment, an expansion in their facility, to quadruple their production. And what they are looking for is final users, because the production capacity, the know-how is already developed and it's proprietary. Nothing rocket science. Many small tricks that play a big role in the final packaging," Rissi said.

Taking the company to that scale, however, will require more customers wanting to purchase the company's output. PlastiWeber now sells to a variety of applications, including 100 percent recycled shrink and case wraps.

Growth over the years has made PlastiWeber the second-largest employer in its hometown, a point of pride for the company.

As PlastiWeber increases capacity at its original location in Feliz, the company also has a vision of building additional operations in other parts of Brazil.

"The recycling rates in Brazil are very small, therefore the opportunities can be massive," Weber said through translation.

"Brazil is a low-income country. There is a lot of littering and a lot of work to do. The vision is that they will expand inside of Brazil for teaching the people that the plastic material is not a pollution, but a solution if handled properly," Weber said.

To help find buyers for the company's increasing output in Feliz, the company also is looking for new international partners interested in the firm's 100 percent recycled film products.

PlastiWeber, because it makes film products from its own recycled resin created from materials it collects on its own, has a deep understanding of the entire manufacturing process. Integration has helped inform the firm about how to make improvements throughout the system over the years.

"They have this learning and know-how about waste management. Then you go to this second step which is sorting and making the recyclables. They have learned how to do that in a very specific way in order to have high-quality recyclates. Then there is this third step, which is making the packaging out of it," Rissi said.

"With this, you can close the loop of the circular economy because they handle everything. They have the sourcing as the first step, the packaging production and the customers that use the packaging itself," Weber said through Rissi. "A really circular process."