Adelaide factory gets governments' circular economy funds to turn soft plastics into pellets to make new packaging
The refit of Recycling Plastics Australia’s factory at Kilburn in Adelaide’s inner north would enable it to turn soft plastics such as shopping bags, chip packets and food wrappers into pellets (at right) that could used in producing new soft plastic packaging to complete a circular economy.
Images courtesy Recycling Plastics Australia
A $20 million Australian government grant in 2024 backed Recycling Plastics Australia’s factory refit at Kilburn in Adelaide’s inner north that would enable the company to divert 14,000 tonnes of soft plastics annually from local landfills and into the circular economy.
Recycling Plastics Australia in Kilburn aimed to clean and purify soft plastics such as shopping bags, chip packets and food wrappers to create feedstock pellets to be used for new soft plastic packaging. The company’s chair Peter Gregg said his firm had “a proud history leading the circular economy by recycling plastics that are difficult to process”.
Recycling Plastics Australia had been turning plastics into granulated and pellet stocks for plastics manufacturers for 40 years. The company had a multi-million-dollar refit of its factory in 2018 to integrate infrared visualisation systems and optical sorters. The company claimed to be able to recycle 40,000 tonnes of polymer waste per year, led by general manager Stephen Scherer.
Recycling Plastics Australia was one of the first to benefit in 2024 from the Australian government’s new $60 million recycling modernisations fund plastics technology stream, delivered in partnership with the South Australian government. The fund aimed to expand businesses’ capacity to sort, process and remanufacture hard-to-recycle materials like tyres, plastics, paper and cardboard.
In 2022, the REDcycle initiative collapsed when it was revealed the soft plastics that consumers were returning to supermarkets had been put in storage and not recycled. The six REDcycle plants in South Australia shut down after major supermarkets Coles and Woolworths stopped accepting soft plastics at recycling terminals.
The Australian government also intended in 2024 to support soft plastics recycling by improving packaging design through new national packaging laws. These laws would require packaging to be designed to be recovered, reused, recycled and reprocessed safely in line with circular economy principles.
