Unique recycling system to be installed in Vietnam

 Bepex International announced that it has signed an agreement with Vietnam-based Thanh Tai Gas Company to custom design, fabricate and deliver the first system to Southeast Asia in its new line of plastic bottle recycling systems, called BePET?. The FDA-approved system will allow Thanh Tai to recycle up to 1.5 billion plastic bottles made of PET, a type of plastic, per year.
 "BePET? cost-effectively recycles PET plastic flake whilst simultaneously controlling final product quality," said Ralph Imholte, President and CEO, Bepex International. "Our new system can help the industry move towards greater sustainability by making the resulting recycled PET flake more cost effective and usable in more ways than other current PET recycling systems offer."
 The system is unique because it allows the processing plant operator to control both decontamination of the plastic and product intrinsic viscosity (IV) – a measure of the strength of the plastic polymer, which determines how the resulting plastic can be used – at the same time and in solid form. Different IV plastic can be used for different applications; for example high IV can be used for tyre cord applications, whilst low IV plastic can be used for fibre applications such as fleece, or carpet. Additionally, the system's innovative process design allows operating and capital costs to be some of the lowest in industry, with savings of up to 60 percent when compared to currently available recycling systems.
 "BePET? is designed to conduct flake-to-flake recycling for bottle-to-bottle (BtB) applications, whilst still allowing extreme flexibility to produce product suitable for other applications such as fibre or carpet," said Mr. Hieu, owner, Thanh Tai Gas Company. "In selecting BePET? for our process needs, we also were impressed with the highly customised solution the Bepex engineering team was able to provide to us for our unique situation here in Vietnam."
 Since the 1970's, Bepex has been a world leader in solid state polymerisation (SSP) of PET polymer and has installed over 100 systems on six continents. Virtually all soft drink and water bottles produced globally are made of PET. On average, it takes 70% less energy to produce a product from recycled plastic than from raw materials. According to a 2010 NAPCOR report, the total number of pounds of PET bottles and jars available in the United States for recycling in 2009 was 2.33 million metric tonnes, and just 28% was collected for recycling.
 The first line of the FDA-approved system for Thanh Tai will be installed and fully operational by January 2012 after which a second parallel line will be installed to expand capacity to produce different IV plastic for a variety of applications, especially for the food packing industry.
 Thanh Tai started as a small gas extraction service company. Since then, it has made an unstoppable effort to become a bigger Thanh Tai group, who runs its business in the areas of composite, construction, technological development, industrial gas, fibreglass, and the plastics industry. The Thanh Tai group's vision is to become a national trademark for the recycle PET industry by always updating and applying the world's latest technologies to make safe products for the public and do so in a way that contributes to protecting the environment.
 The Vietnam Plastic Association estimates that if 35-50 percent of plastic is recycled, the country will no longer need $2.5 billion every year to import raw materials to make plastic products. The selling prices of end products will also decline by as much as 15 percent.