Ballarat recycling engineers Replas will receive $735,000 in government funding for a massive equipment upgrade, which will help get more soft plastic out of landfill and oceans to create useful products.
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The company, based in Canadian, takes soft plastics from supermarkets through the REDCycle progam - you'll see bins near entrances for breadbags and other packaging - and breaks them down into a versatile polymer.
The grant will help buy a new machine with four times the capacity of its current equipment, according to managing director Mark Jacobsen, which will process the plastic into "advanced polymer feedstock", helping to "future-proof" the company as more recyclable waste floods in.
"Currently, we can go through 250 kilograms per hour, but this new machine goes through 1000kg/h, that's a Kombi Van full of plastic bags, densified into bales, put through every hour," he said.
"There are three million pieces of plastic collected by the public and put into Coles and Woolworths REDCycle bins every year - this machine, which (the grant) paid for, has the capacity of 7000 tonnes per year, and the current capacity of RED Group, what they're receiving, is 6000 tonnes a year, so this machine could technically do all of Australia's collection."
The plastic is then turned into products like park benches, fence posts, and other useful items, which are then bought back by supermarkets and businesses, as well as councils.
It's now common to see plastic benches in supermarkets with plaques noting what they're made of.
The company also processes plastic for use in concrete and footpaths, Polyrok.
Mr Jacobsen said the company expects to hire up to 10 more workers to deal with the surge of feedstock, and is already exploring creating and selling new consumer products like buckets and vertical planters, all made from recycled material.
"The world's looking for this advanced polymer feedstock, which has more value," he said.
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"'Advanced' means a feedstock that can be used in moulding, before it goes into our products - in the past, with the old feedstock, maybe we could mix in 10 per cent (recycled material), this could allow us to mix in 50, 60 per cent.
"Just because of this machine, we're expecting a 20 per cent increase in sales purely from this advanced feedstock product."
The funding comes from the federal government's Recycling Modernisation Fund and the state government's Recycling Victoria Infrastructure Fund, a media release states.
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