Verdeco announces 3rd flake-to-pellet R-PET facility in South Carolina

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Recently announced, Verdeco is opening their third recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET) manufacturing facility in Greenville, South Carolina.

The new facility is slated to have over 40,800 tonnes/year (90m lb/year) of flake-to-pellet capacity and be operational by June 2023.

Moreover, Verdeco has also recently upgraded equipment at their existing Southgate, California, and Terre-Haute, Indiana, facilities, bringing an additional capacity increase of over 13,600 tonnes/year (30m lb/year).

The new facility plans are in conjunction with the relocation of Verdeco’s corporate headquarters to Greenville, South Carolina, following the 2020 acquisition of the company by CUDOS Group, a European based private equity firm.

This comes as the US R-PET market faces healthy, borderline excess supply of finished flake and pellet material, as end customers limit purchase volumes on worsening economic sentiments.

Though the beverage packaging industry is expected to increase its use of post-consumer recycled content over the next several years, current progress is heard to be slow for some brand companies and packaging converters.

Due to the macroeconomic headwinds which are challenging all industries – including consumer goods – several companies posted negative or flat sales volumes this past quarter. Instead, all sales growth has been channelled through price increases, further exacerbating consumers’ inflationary pressure.

In general, most global consumer brand companies noted negative volumes in the European region, flat volumes in the North American region and positive volumes in the Asian region.

In conjunction with these trends, several recycling market participants have commented that their customers are heard to be less aggressive in their sustainability programmes, instead opting to maintain current progress or even delay potential post-consumer recycled content projects.