CarbonLITE (carbonliterecycling.com), an HPC Company, one of the world’s largest recyclers of plastic beverage bottles, today announced plans to build a ‘bottle-to-bottle’ recycling plant in Abilene, TX.  It will process used plastic beverage bottles into food-grade raw material to make into new bottles.  The facility will employ around 100 people who will operate the high-tech state-of-the-art $40-million processing plant.  The plant will process around 1.6 billion used bottles (80 million pounds) annually. 

CarbonLITE expects to break ground before year-end. Production is scheduled to begin in late 2014.

One of CarbonLITE’s most important customers in Texas will be Nestlé Waters North America for its Ozarka^® brand 100% Natural Spring Water.  Founded in 1905, Ozarka is bottled in Texas and popular among Texans.   

“Nestlé Waters’ decision to expand its recycled-content program into Texas played an important role in CarbonLITE choosing Texas for our next plant in North America. We already supply Nestlé Waters from our flagship facility in Riverside, CA, so the transition in to Texas will be seamless,” says Neville Browne, CarbonLITE’s President. “We believe other major beverage companies will follow the lead of Nestlé Waters. Ever-increasing recycled content is the only real answer to the challenges facing single-use plastic bottles. The most sustainable bottle of all is the one made from earlier generations of itself,” says Browne.

CarbonLITE provides the recycled plastic for Nestlé Waters North America’s highly popular half-liter Arrowhead^® ReBorn^® water bottles made with fifty-percent recycled content. CarbonLITE’s first recycling plant, a 220,000-square-foot facility operating in Riverside, CA, processes more than two billion used plastic bottles annually.

Nestlé Waters North America’s Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Heidi Paul, says: “Our aim is to increase recycled content in our plastic water bottles. Using recycled bottles is a virtuous circle. It reduces the need for virgin plastic, reduces the carbon impact of each bottle and encourages people to recycle more.”

 The City of Abilene, which promotes growth and diversity in its local economy, encouraged CarbonLITE to locate the new plant in the Five Points Business Park in Abilene.  “We’ve had a very successful history with Leon Farahnik, the Chairman and CEO of CarbonLITE, and we’re pleased to welcome him back into our business community,” says Richard Burdine, CEO of Develop Abilene. “This is going to be a world class facility and it will bring 100 new jobs, from semi-skilled to highly skilled…best of all they’ll be green jobs. Abilene will be truly on the recycling map.”