The Board of Investments (BOI) recently approved a P2.3-billion project to build a state-of-the-art recycling facility in Cavite province to be put up by a joint venture that includes beverage maker Coca-Cola Philippines.
Lanie Dormiendo, BOI officer in charge and director for international investment promotions service, told reporters that the agency has approved the project of a joint venture between Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines Inc. (CCBPI) and Indorama Ventures Packaging.
The plant will recycle PET plastic bottles, which is short for polyethylene terephthalate, a popular packaging material for sodas. The project is considered a “pioneer” investment, which will give it more than the usual tax breaks.
“This was approved as a pioneering project as the company [has] a proprietary and state-of-the-art eight-step recycling process that will transform used PET bottles into fully recycled [ones],” she said.
Under the Omnibus Investments Code of 1987, a pioneer project means the company uses a process that is currently not being done on the commercial scale, among other qualifications. A pioneer project gets six years of income tax holidays as opposed to nonpioneer ventures that get four years.
In an article published earlier this year, CCBPI, the bottling arm of the beverage maker here in the Philippines, announced the joint venture with the local unit of Thailand-based Indorama to establish PETValue, the biggest state-of-the-art, bottle-to-bottle recycling facility in the Philippines.
“PETValue will help ensure that used PET plastic bottles—packaging that is 100-percent recyclable and therefore not ‘single-use’—will be given new life and function as these are collected, processed and used again and again within a circular economy,” it read.
It will deploy cutting-edge technologies to employ the safest and most advanced recycling process for plastic bottles made from PET material. It is projected to process almost two billion pieces of plastic bottles a year, which means it will be recycling 30,000 metric tons of plastic bottles into 16,000 metric tons of recycled PET resin a year.
The project was originally estimated to cost P1 billion, targeting completion in 2021 in General Trias, Cavite. Gareth McGeown, CEO of CCBPI, said they would be recycling not just Coca-Cola bottles, but those from other companies as well.
“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,” he said. INQ