Plastics Recycling Update Magazine: BHS, AMUT provide equipment for Repreve facility expansion

BHS, AMUT provide equipment for Repreve facility expansion

By Jared Paben, Plastics Recycling Update

August 5, 2015

Equipment manufacturers Bulk Handling Systems and AMUT will provide front-line equipment for an expansion of a Repreve recycled fiber facility, the companies announced.

The $25 million project will help Unifi move upstream to control more of the PET used in its Repreve brand recycled fiber, which is incorporated in a wide range of products including clothing and vehicle upholstery. The project is at the company's Reidsville, N.C. facility.

“This state-of-the-art facility will raise the bar for Unifi, allowing us to internalize the majority of our flake requirements as we continue to expand our Repreve filament and polymer chip business,” Mark McNeill, Unifi’s vice president of technology and business development, stated in a press release.

The project is separate from Unifi's effort to more than double the capacity of its Yadkinville, N.C. facility. After that project, the facility will be able to process 132 million pounds of recycled PET per year. That facility opened in 2011.

The expanded Reidsville facility will produce about 75 million pounds of recycled PET flake to supply the Yadkinville facility, company leaders told investors during a July 23 conference call.

"Internal control over bottle processing will allow us to produce the quality and efficiencies that we need to operate cost effectively on a continuous basis," company President and COO Roger Berrier told investors, according to the call transcript.

Eugene, Ore.-based Bulk Handling Systems (BHS) will design, build and install sortation equipment at the Reidsville plant. The BHS system will process 22,000 pounds per hour of PET bales, with the aim of separating clear PET from other materials so it can be turned into flake.

The system will process clear, green and colored PET, mixed PE and PP and separate and sort mixed metals, aluminum and other mixed plastics, Peter Raschio, BHS marketing manager, told Plastics Recycling Update.

The new system will feature screen, air and optical sorting technologies from BHS and BHS-owned companies Nihot and National Recovery Technologies (NRT). The nine optical sorters are pivotal to the secondary plastics purification process, according to BHS.

Equipment manufacturing will start this year, with installation scheduled for January or early Febuary. The full system is expected to be running next June.

Vaughan, Ontario-based AMUT North America will design, build and assemble a PET washing line in the Reidsville facility. The equipment will use the company's dry de-labeling system to remove shrink sleeve wraps from post-consumer bottles, according to AMUT.

"This is to give them total vertical integration of the process," Anthony Georges, AMUT North America's president, stated in a press release.

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