Australian-first recycling plant at Maddingley nearing completion

A MULTIMILLION-dollar soft plastics recycling plant at Maddingley is expected to be operating by early next year, if not sooner.

APR Plastics, of Dandenong, recently received a development licence from the Environment Protection Authority to progress the plant, which is being built at the JB Industrial Park in the Bacchus Marsh suburb.

Once it is up and running, it will be Australia’s first commercial-scale plant to transform soft plastics back into synthetic oil for reuse in new food-grade packaging.

APR Plastics has spent more than $12 million on the project, and has received $250,000 of financial backing from Sustainability Victoria for it.

In simple terms, the Maddingley facility will (for example) take a used potato chip bag and convert it to oil, with the oil transferred back into the production chain and used to create another chip bag.

The same applies to other confectionery bags and wrappers, massively reducing the volume of these items going to landfill.

It will also be a boost to soft plastics recycling, which suffered a major setback when the REDcycle return-to-store program collapsed in 2022.

Under that program, bags returned by customers to supermarkets were used for products such as asphalt additives, gardening kits, bollards, street furniture and more.

But it stalled when it was revealed that REDcycle was apparently only storing the material in warehouses and not recycling it.

Some soft plastics are mechanically recycled, but the Maddingley plant will be the first of its kind in Australia and could be a game-changer for the recycling industry.

APR Plastics managing director Darren Thorpe said the plant, which is being set up to demonstrate that the process works, will initially process 10 tonnes of soft plastic and convert it to 10,000 litres of oil a day.

Mr Thorpe said 14 jobs will be created at the site and will be available to local people, with the potential for as many as 20 indirect jobs further along in the process.

He said under APR Plastics’ process, normally “problematic” items will be infinitely recyclable.

Construction of the plant is well underway, and Mr Thorpe said he hoped it would be operating by February next year at the latest.

“There is 350,000 tonnes of confectionery items plastic put onto the market every year,” he said.

Mr Thorpe said the program that collapsed in 2022 was handling only 7000 tonnes at its height.

“So we’re going to do five times the volume of that in five years,” he said.

“We’re the first of its kind, and then hopefully we can grow it and scale it up…so there’s less of that fossil crude being used.”