GreenFiber invests 35 million Euro in its third plant for synthetic recycled fibres

GreenFiber International, part of Green Group, the largest integrated recycling park in South-Eastern Europe, announced in mid-September an investment of 35 million Euro from private funds, in its third production plant for synthetic fibres made out of 100 per cent recycled PET, to become the biggest European producer on this segment, according to a press release issued to The Diplomat – Bucharest.

2016-10-21 21:53:02 - From the Print Edition

With a total production capacity of 30,000 tonnes/year of synthetics, the new plant will be located in Urziceni, following the buying of Rofep property. The new plant is estimated to be operational in the first quarter of 2017. Furthermore, the company is planning a new investment to double the Urziceni capacity by 2018. Adding also Buzau and Iasi, the national production capacity of GreenFiber will be 113,000 tonnes/year in the final stage of development.
The new Urziceni plant will have continuous activity throughout the year, organized in two shifts, creating new jobs for Urziceni residents and those from neighbour cities. At the end of the project, the total number of GreenFiber employees in Romania will exceed 1,000.
"While the demand from our clients for regenerated fibres was rising, such investment was made possible only following last year's important boost of the operations in the upstream supply chain," stated Clement Hung, CEO of Green Group companies, according to the release. "In 2013 – 2015, we invested 23 million Euro, part of which was to create a functional collection infrastructure in Romania and grow the clean PET collection volumes, while the other was to increase the operational capacities for the lines processing PET bottles prior to reaching our GreenFiber factories."
Within the production process in GreenFiber, PET flakes resulted from the sorting, crushing and washing of PET bottles, are melted into thin threads and transformed into synthetic fibres, an output resembling natural wool. For the new production sites to work at full capacity, 162,000 tonnes/year of PET bottles will have to be processed, which is more than the total amount of PET put annually on the Romanian market.