JFC Plastics Ltd is one of the UK’s largest and well established recyclers of post consumer use plastic bottles, and for many years we have demonstrated proximity recycling while most around us preferred to simply export bottles to China. In addition to manufacturing twin-wall drainage pipe from 100% waste post consumer plastic bottles, for use in the construction and agricultural markets,  JFC have been the only company in the UK recycling post consumer PET, to be re-used in the polyester fibre industry.

JFC Plastics Ltd have recently relocated the recycling division to a brand new site in Runcorn, Cheshire, in order to put in place the next phase of an ambitious capital investment programme and in so doing have dramatically improve the infrastructure of the UK’s plastic recycling industry. This new investment has included the installation of a brand new Sorema chemical hot-wash line for the PET bottle flake, designed to produce a PET flake of an extremely high level of purity.

This PET flake will be of a quality suitable for conversion back into thermoformed trays, bottles or other food grade packaging applications, and therefore represents the ultimate solution of closed loop packaging recycling. JFC has become one of the first to install this chemical hotwash capacity in order to meet what is anticipated to be a significant newly emerging market demand for RPET.

This brand new state of the art PET chemical hot wash line is in addition to significantly enhanced and uprated autosorting, a newly operational fully integrated HDPE washplant, a significantly improved mechanical pre-sorting section, and a completely new and automated water treatment plant. In addition to all of this, a new pipe manufacturing machine has also been purchased, installed and commissioned to convert the recovered HDPE bottle flake into drainage pipe on site.

Plans are also in place to install additional extrusion lines to produce wood replacement HDPE decking board and fencing panels. The combined effect of the investment will be an enhanced capacity of 25,000 tonnes per year of mixed plastic bottles, with minimal environmental impact, and all designed to produce feedstock and products of extremely high levels of quality and purity, in order to satisfy the needs of the many newly emerging markets for recycled plastics.

The UK as a whole is currently collecting around 180,000 tonnes of plastic bottles per year, which represents around 30% of the estimated 550,000 tonnes that enter the waste stream every year. One of the factors that has traditionally restricted growth in bottle collection schemes has been a concern over a lack of sustainable end markets for the recovered polymer. This has lead to large amounts (estimated at more than 85% in 2008) being shipped to the Far East for processing in the low cost and environmentally unregulated facilities that exist there.

With this new facility JFC Plastics Ltd will not only provide the UK with a guaranteed market for plastic bottles collected, but also ensure they are processed in an environmentally safe and controlled manner. The site operates under Waste management License EAWML 10011, and therefore is closely monitored by the Environment Agency to ensure rigorously high environmental and operating standards are maintained.

JFC Plastics Ltd is works closely with Local Authorities and Waste Management companies throughout the UK to help start new collection schemes, and expand still further existing schemes, in order to help raise the UK’s overall plastic bottle recovery rates. We are seeking to form long term partnerships on a contractual basis to provide stability for both parties. We are able to offer our advice and expertise on how to start collection schemes, and will take a flexible and long term approach to help expand the schemes.

We have targeted mixed bottles for our plant in recognition of the fact that manually sorting the bottles into the individual types of plastic and colours, as was traditionally done in many MRF’s, is a huge drain on both labour and equipment, extremely slow, and therefore uneconomic. Autosorting at the right economy of scale, as is done in our plant, will dramatically reduce the operational costs of a MRF.

The plant will take mixed and/or segregated bottles, in a baled, compacted or loose form depending on the requirements of each individual collection scheme. We will not however take pre-shredded PET due to the difficulty in separating out contamination and the stringent quality requirements of our end markets. We will help minimise our suppliers storage and logistics issues by accepting composite loads, and can always arrange transport for baled bottles where required. If you would like any more information or a quote for your bottles, then please do not hesitate to contact us.