French waste management group Suez (Paris; www.suez-environnement.com) is building a recycling plant in Thailand’s Bang Phli district, near Bangkok, to convert 30,000 t/y of locally collected PE film waste into high-quality secondary materials for the plastics processing industry. The project due to be completed in mid-2020 will have an advanced water treatment system that cuts water usage. Further reducing its environmental impact, it will draw its energy from rooftop solar panels.

Suez said the new Thai facility will strengthen its presence in Southeast Asia and solidify its position in the plastics recycling sector worldwide. The French group, which is already building an industrial waste-to-energy plant in Thailand, said it will “fully utilise” its leading recycling technology to help reach the government’s ambitious target to achieve 100% plastics recycling by 2030. An estimated 2m of plastics waste is generated in the country annually and only a quarter is recycled. At the end of June 2018, Thailand implemented what it said was a temporary freeze on imports of plastic scrap as well as E&E waste – see Plasteurope.com of 13.07.2018.