How this Ballarat company is 'eating recycled plastic'

Replas chief executive Paul Hone said the company recycled plastics into different products, like bollards, furniture, fencing and decking.

"If you go up to Darwin and drive around, there are almost all our products," Mr Hone said.

"We are the only manufacturer of our type in the world. We feel unique in Australia. There is nobody like us."

Mr Hone said Replas could put about 5000 tons of plastics through the plants, and all their products were made of a minimum 85 per cent of recycled plastics.

Some products could reach 100 per cent, he added.

"The (recyclable plastic) we get is very variable - it's not always the same source. We might have to put something - a modifier - to make it flow," Mr Hone said.

He said the recycled-plastic sources were almost all post-consumer products.

The company's managing director Russell Muller said the types of the post-consumer products had a high polypropylene content, like seats and curtains.

According to Replas, there are 65 employees throughout the business, providing products for 12 industries, ranging from mining to civil engineering applications.

The Ballarat East plant also features robots, helping workers, though executives were careful not to reveal too much about the specific manufacturing techniques.

According to Replas, a $2.5 million upgrade with two new machines will be complete over the next two years under the federal government's Circular Economy Recycling Modernisation Fund.

This will include a "much larger" molding machine, which can manufacture heavier items up to 100kg, up from the current maximum of 30kg.

Mr Hone said some people assumed the plastic products are bad for the environment.

"Plastics is good for the environment in the right usage profile," he said, "There is nothing we do that has an impact on the environment."

Mr Hone said rather then use the plastics once and stick it in the ground as landfill, it was better to re-use them and make it sustainable.

"One of the bad things about plastics is they don't degrade. One of the good things about plastics is they don't degrade," he said.

Mr Hone said the feature of plastics made the recycled products durable for 40 years.

After 40 years, the recycled products could be ground again to make another product for another 40 years, he added.

"It cannot be recycled forever. That's not possible," he said. "Hundreds of times at 40 years per time."

Working in recycled-plastics manufacturing since 1990, Mr Muller said sometimes they struggled with people dumping the plastics to the factory.

"We do recycle. We (the company) eat recycled plastic. But we aren't set up to take dribs and drabs," he said.

According to Replas, the company's recycled plastics are from processors who prepare the material.