Vetreco’s first production plant has recently opened, and due to an investment of €17M in closed loop recycling technology over 10% of post-consumer waste glass collected in Italy can now be re-melted into new glass containers.
Vetreco was established as a company in 2010, as a joint enterprise between Zignago Vetro, Ardagh Group Italy, and Saint-Gobain Vetri. The company reprocesses raw glass cullet, collected through the various schemes operated by the municipalities and managed by the Consortium for Glass Retrieval into cullet suitable for re-melt.
The plant in Supino, Italy, has a current production capacity of about 200,000 annual tons, which is equivalent to about 10% of the annual cullet recycled in Italy.
The company is able to reprocess cullet to the highest standards of colour separation, a change from the current situation in Italy, where the mixed cullet batches supplied for use in furnaces is only suitable for the production of green containers, or partially colored flint glass.
This new investment made by Vetreco will now secure the supply of clear/ flint cullet, and as a result will lead to higher recycling rates that will benefit both the industry and the environment.
Owing to this investment, it is expected that 70% of all the glass containers produced in Italy will be made from recycled glass.
Furthermore, producing a bottle with only recycled cullet uses approximately 10% less melting energy compared with the equivalent container that uses virgin raw materials (sand, soda, etc.).
