Enval inaugurates new plant for recycling plastic-aluminium laminates in Mexico

On May 25, Enval Ltd. opened its first fully operational recycling plant in Cuautla, located 70 miles south of Mexico City. The company's technology mainly looks after completely separating aluminium from plastic laminates and recycling them individually.

This new facility, worth $3 million, is a joint venture between Enval, Greenback Recycling Technologies Ltd., and Nestlé México SA de CV.

Enval's cutting-edge technology will process difficult-to-process plastic-aluminium laminates and convert them into oil feedstock. The companies involved plan to process 6,000 metric tons of flexible packaging in the first year of operation. Enval is also working on additional plants in countries such as Colombia and Germany.

Meanwhile, Greenback plans to invest over $100 million in Mexico and create at least 20 new plants over the next five to ten years, with plans for expansion in Europe, Africa, Asia, the United States, and Latin America.

In 2018, founder Philippe von Stauffenberg had already made the expansion news known. This is not Greenback's first commercial-scale plant, as they have been operating one for demonstration purposes in the United Kingdom for five years.

The Cuautla plant is energy-sufficient as it can use some of the waste plastic fed to the solution to generate electricity, successfully powering its operations. Greenback goes on to explain in a news release: "We have a connection to the electricity grid for safety reasons and to assist if the self-generation facility is not available, but it is not used on a routine basis."

Nestlé puts Enval's technology on a pedestal, saying it is the only globally available solution to recycle plastic aluminium laminates by "splitting them into high-value oil and aluminium with a low-carbon footprint."

The CEO of Greenback in Mexico is Martin Reich, whose business Plásticos Reich was purchased by the former many years earlier.