Burkasan, which is preparing to commission the first investment utilizing the 5th region incentives in the recycling industry in December, will produce the best raw material from waste plastics through human-free sorting processes. With a 50 million TL investment, the recycled plastic raw material to be produced in the facility will be used in the production of plastic bottles for the first time in Turkey.
Within the scope of the legislation published on June 22, 2018, the recycling industry, which was included in the scope of priority investment, started to benefit from 5th region incentives for investments with a budget of 5 million TL and above. In this context, the first investment in the sector came from Burkasan Waste Management and Environmental Consultancy. With an investment budget of approximately 50 million TL, the facility, which will try to catch the industry 4.0 revolution with its high-tech separation and crushing-washing lines, will be commissioned by the end of the year.
The company will employ an additional 100 people in the new facility. The facility aims to produce raw materials equivalent to the original from waste plastic. Stating that they have invested 120 million liras in the waste management sector in the last five years, Burkasan Chairman Vedat Kılıç said that with the new facility investment, they will reach the capacity to process 15 thousand tons of waste per month in all their facilities.
Stating that the new 15 thousand square meter facility in Kestel is the first investment to receive an incentive certificate in this context after the recycling sector was included in the priority investment heading in 2018, Kılıç said, “We have taken into account Turkey’s waste characteristics and developments in the sector in our new facility. It is a modern, technological, high-capacity facility that will serve our country’s zero waste project in a real sense. At the same time, if we take into account that waste collection rates will increase rapidly in our country, as in other examples around the world, with the mandatory deposit application that will start in 2021, it is obvious that we will need facility investments that will separate and recycle beverage packaging to be collected with this method with high capacities. Therefore, this technological facility has been designed to meet the requirements of the deposit system.”
Raw material to global player
Explaining that mixed plastic waste bottles will be separated from each other with automatic sorting technology according to their polymer structures without human touch, Kılıç said: “For example, while PET wastes can be separated from other wastes based on manpower on a belt with conventional methods, with the new technology, thanks to the codes to be entered into the computer, the system will automatically first separate PETs from other wastes and then sort these PETs according to their colors. In this method, which is untouched by human hands, separation will be realized with a purity of approximately 99 percent. The recycled raw materials, which will be obtained after undergoing various processes following high purity separation, will be used by a global player for the first time in Turkey.”
Explaining that they aim to reach the highest quality raw materials from plastic wastes, Kılıç stated that they will process 3 thousand tons of waste per month and obtain plastic raw materials that are substitutes for the original and offer them to the use of the plastics main industry.
With additional investment, it also wants to produce PET in granules
Giving information about the operation of the facility, Vedat Kılıç continued his words as follows: “Initially, we will produce high density polyethylene as granules and PET as flakes. However, our goal is to obtain PET as granules with the additional investment we will make as of the second half of 2020. In the medium term, we want to achieve ‘bottle-to-bottle’ recovery status. If approved by the Turkish Food Codex, we aim to produce raw materials for the production of PET bottles that can be used in the beverage industry.”
Wastewater will be reused in the treatment plant
Stating that they have also established a mechanical and chemical treatment facility with an investment of approximately 1.5 million TL, Vedat Kılıç said, “The wastewater released during crushing and washing processes will be treated in this treatment facility and made ready to be used in production again. In other words, our facility will operate with a zero waste philosophy in every respect. We also plan to utilize renewable energy in the short term.” Kılıç added that they aim to offer the highest quality, stable and sustainable raw material to the end user by analyzing the raw material produced in the laboratory they established with an investment of 750 thousand TL for the facility according to many parameters.