The Egypt-based company is the leading rPET producer in the MENA region. In its quest to meet the increasing demand for rPET in Africa and Europe, pursue its vision to become one of the most prominent recyclers globally and the biggest in the MEA region, BariQ invests in a state-of-the-art plastic recycling facility. Its industry experience and network of influential partners, combined with the recycler’s capability to produce food-grade rPET provide the necessary foundation to bring recycling in the MEA region to the next level.
Sunday, February 13, marked a new milestone in the company’s history and a promising outlook for the industry: BariQ welcomed Ministers from the Egyptian Government, ambassadors, brand owners, equipment providers as well as local and foreign financial institutes to its expansion ceremony to officially announce and celebrate the construction of a new bottle-to-bottle recycling facility in Giza Governorate, Egypt. The event offered valuable networking opportunities and revealed the new plant’s design to produce more than 35,000 metric tons of food-grade rPET per annum while saving more than 80,000 tons of CO2 emissions. The new facility will complement a recycling plant that has been fully operational since 2010 and features 4 of Tomra’s sensor-based sorting systems that process more than 3 tons of PET bottles per hour. To date, the company produces an annual amount of 15,000 tons of food-grade rPET that is compliant with the standards set by EFSA, FDA, Health Canada and REACH.
Due to the increased demand for rPET from numerous industries, BariQ is scaling up its capabilities and constructing a new plant. Planned to be fully operational in 2023, the new facility will process 3.5-4 metric tons of post-consumer PET waste per hour. As quality demands become more stringent and the amount of post-consumer plastic waste is on the rise, the choice of future-forward sorting technology and reliable partners was crucial and led to BariQ selecting Tomra. “Tomra has been a dependable, knowledgeable partner for the past 10 years. Thanks to our close collaboration, their remote and on-site service support, and high-performance machines, we achieve excellent sorting results. While there are more providers in the market to choose from today, we selected TOMRA because they provide us with an overall solution that sorts all polymer types and flakes “, conveys Ahmed Elkasaby, Chief operations officer at BariQ.
The new plant will be equipped with 2 new generation AAutosort for pre-sorting PET bottles and trays and 2 Autosort Flake units for additional purification that includes polymer sorting by material and color, and the reliable removal of metal contaminants. Thanks to the combination of the latest technologies in a single machine, Autosort features Flying Beam and Deep Laiser technologies among others to accurately separate PET bottles by material and color in a multi-step sorting process. After the pre-sorted material has been shredded, washed, and dried, the Autosort Flake machines create a pure clear/light blue PET flake fraction which is then processed and transformed into pellets. The end product, a predicted 35,000 tons /annum, will be sold to global brand owners and converters looking for increasing their recycled content with food-grade rPET.
