The British waste management company Viridor has decided to close down its recycling plant for plastic packaging waste in Avonmouth following "a detailed strategic review". A separate review of the company's Rochester plastics sorting facility is still ongoing.
Viridor had begun commissioning the Avonmouth mechanical recycling plant in 2021. The facility was to produce up to 60,000 tonnes a year of recycled PET, HDPE and PP from post-consumer rigid plastic packaging such as bottles, pots, tubs and trays. Of that total, some 18,000 tonnes were to be food-grade recycled PET (rPET).
In its announcement, Viridor said that its UK mechanical recycling operations had been negatively impacted by "persistently and increasingly challenging market conditions", and the absence of planned legislation to increase rates of plastic recycling in the UK. "Recycling rates are below where they were projected to be in 2020. Policies announced and planned under the previous government to increase UK recycling, as set out in the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy, have been repeatedly delayed and have not, to date, been implemented", the company said.
"The significant delay in implementing these policies, combined with reduced demand for recycled plastic and packaging products from the consumer goods sector, have had a material impact on the financial viability of Viridor’s UK mechanical recycling operations. This has been exacerbated by broader market conditions; the global virgin polymer market is suffering from overcapacity due to significant growth in production in lower-cost markets outside Europe, leading to significantly reduced demand and prices for recycled plastics. At the same time, imported recycled plastics from low-cost countries has increasingly flowed into Europe displacing domestic supply. The combination of these pressures has resulted in today's decision", Viridor said on 5 November.
The proposed closure of the Avonmouth plant will be subject to the normal consultation process, according to Viridor. The company is "currently exploring redeployment opportunities within the wider Viridor business for those colleagues impacted by this decision".
In 2023, the company had also shut down its Skelmersdale plastics recycling facility in Lancashire, where it had processed post-consumer bottles and produced deodorised HDPE compounds and PET flakes. That plant had a capacity of 40,000 tonnes per year.
Focus on Quantafuel
Viridor said it is continuing to invest in polymer recycling through its Quantafuel subsidiary. The Norwegian chemical recycling company was taken over in 2023. "The focus now is on creating an efficient business that can play a key role in developing viable chemical recycling infrastructure and through Quantafuel’s joint venture Resource Denmark", Viridor said. In its 2023/24 financial year, the company booked an impairment for Quantafuel's "plastics-to-liquids" (PtL) plant located in Skive, Denmark.
Viridor added that it "remains committed to, and a supporter of, delivering a circular economy, preventing waste from going to landfill and driving the UK’s Net Zero and decarbonisation objectives". The company said it would continue to make major investments in the UK’s waste and decarbonisation infrastructure, including the carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at its Runcorn waste to energy (wte) plant located near Liverpool.
Viridor was taken over by the US financial investment company KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) in 2020. In January 2022, KKR agreed to sell a 20 per cent stake to infrastructure investor Equitix.
