Beauparc to Launch Irish Plastic Manufacturing
Beauparc company IPR, the largest recycling company in Ireland, will launch Irish Plastic Manufacturing (IPM) in 2018 to initially process up to 15,000 tonnes of plastic per annum, particularly LDPE shrink wrap film.
Two major factors convinced Beauparc to progress this exciting venture: Firstly, this particular plastic material has historically been exported to China. However, in the past 12 months China has greatly reduced the amount of recycled raw materials that they are willing to accept and from January 2018 the Chinese government will enact a plastic waste import ban. Secondly, at present The European Commission are heavily promoting a circular economy where possible. As Beauparc are 100% committed to building better business and promoting environmental sustainability by closing the loop and reducing carbon emissions from export where possible, this is something we wanted to help facilitate.
Over the past 8 months IPR Managing Director Des Crinion and our key engineers have been extensively researching the technology that is available to process this material in the most environmentally friendly manner while minimising the use of natural resources such as energy and water. Speaking about the development of the project, Des Crinion stated “We have consulted with Repak, The Department for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the EPA and the relevant Local Authority to ensure that our project will further steer Ireland towards it’s EU directive recycling targets by 2020 as well as enabling the creation of more job opportunities and providing Irish Manufacturers with direct access to plastic materials”
The technological process itself will briefly involve: sorting the film as it comes to the depot to ensure no cross contamination from foreign objects, other plastic types and paper. The clean material will be shredded into smaller pieces. Following this the material will be washed, passed through a magnet and granulated. This material will then be cleaned using state of the art technology before being dried using both mechanical and thermal driers before finally being extruded into pellets. These pellets will be quality assured in our onsite laboratory before being sold directly to Irish manufacturers to make LDPE products such as the bag for life, bin liners and geo textile liners.
To date, the total committed investment from Beauparc in this state of the art facility is €5m. This facility will include the processing facility, onsite laboratory and a water treatment plant. IPM are estimating to launch operations by Q3, 2018.