Year 2020
March 2020

Indorama Ventures and Coca Cola ink partnership to set up Philippines largest bottle-to-bottle recycling facility

12 March 2020 – Manila, Philippines — Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines, Inc. (CCBPI)—the bottling arm of Coca-Cola in the country—and Thailand-headquartered Indorama Ventures (IVL) have signed a joint-venture agreement to establish PETValue, the largest state-of-the-art, bottle-to-bottle recycling facility in the Philippines.

Formed with the shared goal of making a more sustainable future happen today, PETValue will have cutting-edge technologies and industry-leading best practices to employ the safest and most advanced recycling process for plastic bottles made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) material.

Its projected capacity, or the amount of used plastic bottles it can process, is 30,000 MT / year which amounts to nearly 2 billion pieces of plastic bottles, with an output of 16,000 MT / year of recycled PET resin.

PETValue will help ensure that used PET plastic bottles—packaging that is 100% recyclable, and therefore not “single-use”—will be given new life and function as they are collected, processed, and used again and again within a circular economy.

Gareth McGeown, CEO of CCBPI shared that IVL has been helping the company with innovative initiatives on sustainable packaging—from light-weighting efforts that allow CCBPI to lessen the amount of plastic used in packaging, to developing the country’s first-ever beverage bottle made from 100% recycled plastic.

“Through PETValue, Indorama Ventures and Coca-Cola are introducing to the Philippines green technologies that will help strengthen Filipino’s commitment to sustainability—a major step in making our World Without Waste vision a reality in the Philippines.”

Gareth McGeown, CEO, CCBPI

He added, “Through this facility, we will boost the collection rates of clear plastic bottles—collecting not just Coca-Cola bottles, but even ones from other companies.The facility will also support Filipino jobs as well as thelivelihoods of people within the waste value chain.”

Indorama Ventures is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), in keeping with their thrust for growth that rests on positive environmental and social continuity.

Commenting on IVL’s commitment to sustainability and to ensuring that the technologies it uses are advanced, efficient, and meet or even surpass industry standards so that environmental impact can be better managed; Yashovardhan Lohia, its Chief Recycling Officer said

“We firmly believe that a circular economy for plastic bottles, particularly PET plastic bottles, is possible and must be established. We cannot let the potential of this recyclable resource go to waste.”

The PHP 1-billion, next-generation facility will be established in General Trias, Cavite, and is expected to be completed in 2021.

Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste goal is the company’s commitment to collect and recycle the equivalent of every bottle and can it sells by 2030. The PETValue facility will be yet another concretization of Coca-Cola’s comprehensive sustainability blueprint, one that creates positive inroads towards a circular economy.