By Bill Bregar
SENIOR STAFF REPORTER
Published: July 16, 2014 10:43 am ET
Updated: July 16, 2014 11:00 am ET
CarbonLite Recycling LLC has signed contracts for equipment at its new 200,000-square-foot plastics recycling plant in Abilene, Texas.
Employing more than 100 people, the factory will recycle about 100 million pounds of beverage bottles into PET pellets.
Total investment is more than $60 million.
• Bulk Handling Systems of Eugene, Ore., will build the new plant’s front-end bale-opening and bottle-sorting equipment, using sorting modules from its subsidiary, NRT, in Nashville, Tenn.
• Amut SpA of Novara, Italy, is supplying the label-removal, bottle washing, grinding and flake-washing modules.
• Erema North America Inc. is supplying food-grade purification and pelletizing equipment.
In Texas, CarbonLite will supply Nestle North America’s factory in Dallas.
CarbonLite opened its first plant in 2011, in Riverside, Calif.
“The beverage bottling giants are all committed to incorporating post-consumer material into their bottles,” said CarbonLite President Neville Brown. “Some companies are more aggressive than others and Nestle is certainly leading the charge with its 50 percent post-consumer initiatives.”
Brown said so-called bottle-to-bottle recycling makes sense. “New plastic bottles should be made from old plastic bottles,” he said. “That’s the ultimate sustainability.” | 
