GLOBAL RECYCLING DAY 2025 – ALPLA milestones
With more than 30 years of experience in recycling and its own recycling plants worldwide, the ALPLA Group is helping to ensure that plastics remain in the recycling loop. On Global Recycling Day 2025, the focus will be on the most important developments and measures taken by ALPLArecycling in recent years.
The Clean Bottle recycling plant for HDPE is located in São José dos Pinhais in the state of Paraná.
Used packaging is a valuable raw material
For ALPLA, used packaging is not useless waste, but a valuable raw material that is processed into high-quality recyclates using state-of-the-art technologies in 14 of our own plants worldwide. By utilising the recyclates, used packaging is turned back into new packaging according to the bottle-to-bottle principle. This promotes the organisation of an efficient collection of recyclable materials and makes it possible to close regional cycles. Recycling is therefore an elementary component of a functioning circular economy.
The international ALPLArecycling network now comprises 14 plants – including five joint ventures – in ten countries: Germany, Italy, Mexico, Austria, Poland, Romania, Spain, South Africa, Thailand and Brazil. The installed and projected output capacity amounts to 389,000 tonnes of PCR material per year – 290,000 tonnes of rPET (recycled PET) and 99,000 tonnes of rHDPE (recycled HDPE).
‘The further development of recycling technologies and the use of recyclates is important to us. We invest in both technology and capacity expansions in order to be able to provide high-quality material.’
Philipp Lehner, CEO
Design for recycling
ALPLA designs all packaging solutions so that they are 100 per cent recyclable. In addition, PCR already accounted for 21.9 per cent of ALPLA's total material usage in 2024. ALPLA is investing around 50 million euros per year to further increase this proportion and continue to promote the recycling of plastics in the future.
For ALPLA, recycling is an important contributor to achieving global climate targets, clearly highlighted when the decarbonisation targets were submitted to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) for validation at the beginning of 2024. By using PET and HDPE recycled material in lightweight and recyclable plastic packaging, ALPLA is making a significant contribution to reducing its carbon footprint.
ALPLA milestones:
2025
- ALPLArecycling joined the Brazilian HDPE recycling company Clean Bottle at the beginning of 2025 and acquired a majority stake in the joint venture. The annual output capacity is 15,000 tonnes.
2024
- ALPLA opens state-of-the-art recycling plant in South Africa: Production facility supplies up to 35,000 tonnes of PET recycling material annually
- ALPLA joins forces with Re-Purpose: Strategic partnership with Re-Purpose to strengthen the plastics cycle in South Africa
- New ‘Planeta’ recycling plant in Mexico: After laying the foundation stone in 2022 and 2023, acceptance for all lines and ramp-up of production took place in 2024
2023
- ALPLA pools all recycling activities under the new ALPLArecycling brand.
- Start of production at the state-of-the-art PET recycling plant in Târgu Mures, Romania. The installed annual capacity is 18,000 tonnes of rPET
Do you like our texts? Perhaps even so much that you want to use them in your own media? Then please get in touch with us beforehand!