Sustainability Drives Innovation at Leading RPET Processors

Plastics Technology
Jan Schutt, Contributing Editor

...Peninsula has three coextrusion lines with six unvented single-screw extruders, paired two by two. The first two lines together produce 150,000 lb/day of rollstock. They originally had vacuum pumps and vents, “but the pumps failed almost immediately–in a matter of hours–from the volatiles being drawn off the barrel,” Byrne recalls. “So we disconnected the pumps and closed the vents.” The newest and largest coex line, built by Processing Technologies International, LLC (PTi) Aurora, Ill. (ptiextruders.com) extrudes more than 100,000 lb/day.


Peninsula keeps its “carbon footprint” down by making produce packaging close to the growers that use it. Punched produce boxes need some virgin PET to overcome the brittleness of RPET.

Peninsula extrudes sheet from 12 to 40 mils thick and 56 in. wide. Takeoff equipment, designed in-house, winds 4000-lb rolls that allow thermoformers to run up to 2 hr without a roll change. Peninsula operates 14 roll-fed thermoformers from Lyle Industries, Inc., Beaverton, Mich. (lyleindustries.com), each forming close to
50,000 lb/day.

Peninsula isn’t vertically integrated back to the bottle bale. It buys clean RPET flake from Global and other recyclers. But Peninsula’s investors recently purchased a 25% interest in Peninsula Plastic Recycling Inc., a new plant in Turlock, Calif. That operation is majority owned by Merlin Plastics in Canada, which is also a long-time supplier of RPET to Peninsula.

Peninsula has grown rapidly from the days in late 2002, when it occupied one corner of its leased plant. Today it occupies 350,000 sq ft of the same plant, and 120,000 sq ft in North Carolina, and employs 275 people in all. It used to run 24/7 for 365 days a year at both plants, but this year it will stop for Christmas.

The company was awarded the Dan Eberhardt Environmental Stewardship Award from the Society of Plastics Engineer’s GPEC Conference in 2009 for overall sustainability of operation, and a Certificate of Partnership from the U.S. EPA in 2007 for its role in solar power use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The California Product Stewardship Council named Peninsula “Outstanding Partner of the Year” for 2008 and 2009 for accomplishments in sustainability.

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