A collaboration for shaping the future of recycling in Mexico: TOMRA Recycling & Indorama Ventures

The recycling sector in Mexico is witnessing the collaboration of two companies, TOMRA Recycling and Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited. Dedicated and committed to enable greater sustainability and an environmentally friendly way of production and consumption, both companies seek to promote the future of plastics recycling in Mexico by producing recycled plastic of the highest quality. In 2014, Indorama Ventures, a global chemical producer, acquired the PET recycling Plant, located in Zapopan, Jal. (Mexico). Supported by TOMRA Recycling’s advanced sorting machines, which effectively sort incoming PET bottles and PET flakes, the expansion of line 2 in Indorama Ventures EcoMex was concluded this year.

Indorama Ventures entered the recycling business in 2011 and operates production facilities that transform post-consumer PET bottles into flakes, rPET resins and recycled polyester yarns. The plant has a total production capacity of 42,000 tonnes per year of flakes, which can be used in recycling process inside Indorama or with externalcustomers. In 2014, Indorama started the production of FuTuRePET bottle grade resin, which consists of the flakes produced from post-consumer PET bottles at their facility. Only 5 years later, Indorama started installing a second PET bottle post-consumer recycling production line processing 30,000 tons of PET flakes a year and equipped it with TOMRA’s state-of-the-art sorting machines.

In a first step, two AUTOSORT® units presort incoming PET bottles obtained from landfills and collection centersprimarily from central and western Mexico.The presort includesone positive and one negative sort plus a recirculation process for the false rejects from the first two machines.

Presorted materials are then washed and shredded before the respective PET flakes are further sorted and purified by two AUTOSORT® FLAKE units, which generatetons of flakes per year. The flakes produced are further recycled and made available as food-grade PET resin to plastics converters.

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TOMRA’s machinery brings a wealth of benefits from which recyclers can profit, but Indorama also highly appreciates TOMRA’s service: "The services provided by TOMRA have been personalized, either in person or virtually, always responding in a timely manner to our requirements. Their service and expertise, combined with high-tech equipment,have helped us in bringing our production to the next level. We produce high quality products and profit from substantial savings”,describes Shankar Srinivasan, CEO of Indorama’s Recycling Vertical.

The collaboration of TOMRA and Indorama proves to be a promising one in terms of advancing the recycling sector in Mexico.  With both companies having high standards in operations, services and products, the recycling activity and innovation in this sector are greatly supported and strengthened.

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