Teijin Polyester Thailand Limited (TPL), the core base for Teijin Frontier’s polyester fibre manufacturing, is opening a new plant to convert used domestically-produced plastic bottles into recycled polyester chips for the production of high-quality polyester filament.

The plant will start operating in January 2022 and is expected to produce 7,000 tons of recycled polyester chips annually by 2025.

Teijin Frontier will install cleaning equipment and the latest repelletizing machine for removing foreign substances from the recycled PET bottles before they are moulded into chips. TPL will use Teijin Frontier’s proprietary quality-control technologies in its comprehensive system. The raw yarn produced at TPL will be used in Teijin Frontier’s Ecopet recycled filament yarn.

The demand for recycled polyester filaments as well as staple polyester fibres has increased significantly, the company reports.

To date, it has been procuring recycled raw materials to meet this growing demand while seeking raw material suppliers who could help the company both to eliminate high-impact long-distance transportation and optimise its resource-cycling operations.

Despite its best efforts, however, the company eventually determined that it would not be possible to secure stable, high-quality bottle flakes in the vicinity of Thailand, where Teijin Frontier’s main plants are located, leading to the decision to build the new plant.

www.teijin.com