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Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) producer DAK Americas LLC (Charlotte, NC) and carpet maker Shaw Industries Group Inc. (Dalton, GA) have created a joint-venture business to produce recycled PET (RPET) from post-consumer PET bottles. Called Clear Path Recycling LLC, with a new facility to be built in Fayetteville, NC at DAK’s Cedar Creek site, the company is forecast to recycle 280 million lb of PET bottles annually.

Tony Deligio

May 4, 2009

2 Min Read
DAK, Shaw form PET recycling venture

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) producer DAK Americas LLC (Charlotte, NC) and carpet maker Shaw Industries Group Inc. (Dalton, GA) have created a joint-venture business to produce recycled PET (RPET) from post-consumer PET bottles. Called Clear Path Recycling LLC, with a new facility to be built in Fayetteville, NC at DAK’s Cedar Creek site, the company is forecast to recycle 280 million lb of PET bottles annually. In a release, DAK and Shaw said they will both utilize the RPET material as a feedstock to “enhance the value and sustainability of their offerings.”

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DAK Americas and Shaw Industries will launch Clear Path Recycling at DAK’s Cedar Creek, NC production facility. 



DAK Americas told MPW that Shaw will use the RPET for its PET Filament Product lines, including its Clear Touch BCF family of products. The company will also use RPET produced by Clear Path for its Ecologic commercial carpet cushion system, which was introduced in 2003 and contains 88% postconsumer recycled content.

Clear Path has reviewed supply stream options and will be securing these resources over the next six to eight months. A DAK spokesperson told MPW that construction of the facility’s first phase is expected to begin in the coming weeks, with that phase operational in the first quarter of 2010 and the second phase planned for completion in 2012.

Phase one will have the capacity to recycle 160 million lbs of post-consumer PET bottles, and once phase two is completed, plant-wide volume will grow to 280 million lb of bottles. DAK says recycling 100 lb of post-consumer waste PET bottles yields a return of 75 lb of RPET flake.

The RPET material will primarily be used by DAK and Shaw in their polyester based products, with an estimated 25% of the total recycled material produced sold externally through merchant sales. DAK believes the business will represent the largest PET recycling operation in North America.

In 2007, Coca-Cola bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises created Coca-Cola Recycling LLC (CCR), investing $60 million in a series of recycling initiatives, including construction of the world’s largest PET bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, SC. At full capacity, the plant, which opened in January, can produce approximately 100 million lb of food-grade recycled PET plastic each year, equivalent to almost 2 billion 20-ounce Coca-Cola bottles. [email protected]

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