Alwag poured EUR 1,3 m in new waste sorting facility - During 2014, 4000 tons of PET packaging was recycled

eKapija portal has released competition for the best investment in 2014, Aurea 2015. Expecting new winners, we visited companies which last year were short-listed in nominations to see how far they went in their business development.

Two years after starting production, the plant for recycling of PET packaging in Nova Gajdobra Alwag, have still been facing the same problems – insufficient raw materials quantity and bad quality of unsorted waste. In order to improve their production and provide more raw materials, Alwag in 2014 invested EUR1,3 m in new equipment for waste sorting.

- New sorting facility and mills were installed late last year and their results have already been seen - Stojan Dangubic, head at Alwag says for eKapija.

This Novi Sad-based company opened in September 2013 in Nova Gajdobra, a plant for recycling PET packaging, based on production of RPET flakes produced with the hot washing system, which results in semi-product of high cleanness which is sold to customers in food, pharmaceutical, textile industry, for asphalt production, insulation foil and pipes of different profiles and purposes.

It is the first plant of this type in Serbia which enables “return” of dirty bottles which have been in the landfills in usage, even in industry of food and beverage.

During 2014, Alwag processed 4.000t of waste bottles and produced 3.000 t RPET flakes. Although the major part of production was exported to Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the company was planning higher production output of this semi-product. Still, they are not dissatisfied with the objective they did not meet.
(Stojan Dangubic receiving "Aurea" award for social responsibility)

- The figure, even below the plan, is a success at the Serbian market of recycling since we encountered with a number of problems related to raw materials procurement. In Serbia some 100.000 people deals with waste management which is not sufficient for our conditions. Also, there is a problem of the population which does not have a habit of sorting garbage and proper disposal and the number of wild landfills is also high – GM at Alwag explains.

Due to lack of raw materials, Nova Gajdobra-based plant is operating with only the third of its capacity. Full company capacity is processing of 13.500 t PET packaging per year and Alwag is still at the capacity of some 35%. Therefore, expectations are great when it comes to new sorting facility.

- The investment in the sorting facility was necessary so that we could better use inadequate raw materials from Serbia. It proved to be a good move since it enabled Alwag to start 2015 with much better position.

New investments will enable Alwag to move to next stages of processing of PET packaging. Namely, production of RPET flakes is just the first stage which provides semi-product for further processing stages. The second stage refers to RPET granulate, while the third is featured with RPET test tubes and RPET foil which is further used in other industries.

As our collocutor outlines, although waste management in Serbia is a priority issue of environmental protection and one of the most extensive and demanding field when it comes to compliance with EU regulation (over 600 legal documents which must be aligned/adopted), previous year did not see more significant improvements either.

-The Alwag project is thus more important since it has the most modern equipment for recycling of PET packaging in the region. The results of Alwag after a year of operations with the part of almost 50% of total recycled material, will for sure in the future help to comply regulations regulative which EU proscribes as soon as possible – Dangubic says, reminding that Serbia is obliged by the end of 2015 to present to the European Commission negotiating position and start the talks on Chapter 27 which refers to environmental protection.

This young company with great potential last year won the award for social responsibility which our portal delivered in its selection of the Aurea 2014 investment of the year.