The plant, which is located in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England, will have an initial processing capacity of 60,000 tons per year and expandable to 80,000 tons. MBA Polymers has commercial plastic recovery plants in China and Austria and an R&D centre in the United States.
The plant is majority owned by MBA Polymers, Inc. and will focus on recovering plastics primarily from automotive shredder residue sourced from its joint venture partner European Metal Recycling Limited (EMR) of Warrington, England.
This shredder residue is a complex plastics-rich mixture of materials that is available after the recycling of metals from automobiles, consumer electronic devices, appliances and other end-of-life durable goods. It is estimated that over 15 million tons of plastics from these types of goods are disposed of each year around the world. These plastics are commonly land-filled or incinerated at high economic and environmental costs because it is considered too complicated or expensive to recover and to separate them.
EMR will concentrate the plastics fraction of the shredder residue produced from its large-scale metal recycling operations and ship this material to the JV. This additional processing will also allow EMR to capture a higher percentage of the metals. The JV will receive concentrated plastics-rich material from EMR’s facilities, will clean, sort and upgrade the plastics, and then sell the high quality plastics (PP, PE, ABS and HIPS) to MBA’s customers globally.
MBA Polymers UK will enable major automobile, appliance and other durable goods manufacturers to “Close the Loop” by turning plastics rich shredder residue into new materials to make their products more sustainable – enabling them to meet the growing number of environmental standards and to reach green customers. MBA’s services and products provide large social and environmental benefits as well.
Dr Michael Biddle, MBA’s founder and President, said:
“This is another step towards our commitment to provide world-class sustainable products and services to our customers and suppliers around the clock and around the world in a much more sustainable manner compared to the traditional methods of making polymers. Our plants require much less energy compared to a traditional petrochemical-based plastics plant to make the same amount and types of plastics. And for every ton of virgin plastic we replace, we can save two to three tons of the greenhouse gas CO2 from entering the atmosphere.”
Mr Chris Sheppard, EMR Managing Director, said:
“We are delighted to have arrived at this point with MBA. We process a lot of complex end of life products from old cars to waste electronics and while we have always been highly efficient and innovative in recovering the metal content, plastic has been a big challenge. The post-shredder upgrading and the processing through MBA Polymers represents a major breakthrough in plastic recycling and a significant step forward in our journey towards zero waste. The exciting thing is that, as with the steel and the high value metals, this plastic can be used in high quality applications allowing genuine closed loop recycling. For EMR this is the second of three major milestones to deliver best in class recycling performance of 99% for these end-of-life products.”
