$9.5m funding for proposed WA plastic recycling plant

Pact Group and Cleanaway have announced a joint project to build a new plastic recycling plant in Western Australia, which has attracted $9.5 million in grant funding from the Recycling Modernisation Fund and the WA Government.

The funding — which remains conditional upon the completion of financial due diligence and entry into formal funding agreements — was announced by WA Minister for Environment Stephen Dawson and Federal Minister for Environment Sussan Ley.

The proposed plant will process more than 17,000 tons of kerbside plastic waste — including HDPE, PET, LDPE and PP — into nearly 14,000 tons of resin and polymer flake, which will be used to make packaging for food, household and industrial products. It is expected that the facility will create over 50 new jobs in the area.

If the plant goes ahead it will trade as Circular Plastics Australia (WA) and form the second facility under the Pact and Cleanaway collaboration, which was established last year. The initial venture, reported to be the country’s largest PET recycling facility, is currently under construction in Albury and is expected to be operational later this year.

Pact CEO Sanjay Dayal said, “We want to sincerely thank Minister Ley and the federal government for the establishment of the Recycling Modernisation Fund. They have shown great support and leadership by enabling the creation of world-class infrastructure to manage the local processing of Australia’s waste. I would also like to thank Minister Dawson and the WA Government for their support towards this project. We are proud to be given the opportunity to build this facility in WA and offer much-needed employment as areas [of] our economy rebound from the impacts of COVID-19.”

Cleanaway CEO and Managing Director Vik Bansal said, “I congratulate the McGowan government for the vision shown by implementing their container return scheme where consumers can return clean and high-quality, sourced-separated plastic to be locally recycled. This new facility for plastic will recycle the containers collected through the container return scheme and Cleanaway’s new Material Recovery Facility, creating a local circular economy in WA.

“We’re proud that Cleanaway’s Footprint 2025 strategy has reached a point where we’re not only providing the right infrastructure for resource recovery, but extending the value chain to ensure that material is optimised for recycling into new products,” he said.

The proposed facility is hoped to be operational in the first half of 2022.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/meryll