Samyang EcoTech CEO Lee Kun-ho explains plastic flakes at the company’s Siheung plant. (Samyang)

Samyang EcoTech Corp. is at the forefront of South Korean conglomerate Samyang Group’s envisioned eco-friendly PET recycling system.

Its plant in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, processes discarded PET bottles from water, soft drinks, and beer by crushing and refining them into white pellet-like PET chips (R-Chips), which are then recycled into raw materials for food containers and synthetic fibers.

When Maeil Business Newspaper visited the plant on Tuesday, towering bales of PET bottles as high as a two-story building were immediately visible at the entrance of its 5,350-pyeong (approximately 17,700 square meters) facility.

These bales are compacted rectangular stacks of hundreds of PET bottles tightly bound with wire. Discarded PET bottles are compressed and transported to the Siheung plant in this form after being collected from households nationwide.

Inside the factory, the recycling machinery was running at high speed with a deafening noise. The loud hum of powerful air jets, which are used to filter out contaminants and remove labels from PET bottles, mixed with the grinding sounds of crushers to create a great din.

Transparent PET bottles undergo a meticulous 30-step recycling process, including label removal, shredding, washing, and storage, before being transformed into pure white plastic flakes. These flakes are then further processed to produce PET chips.

A key strength of the Siheung plant is its PET bottle sorting and separation technology. The PET bottle bales contain a mix of clear and colored PET bottles, and separating these different types is critical to the recycling process.

The Siheung plant is a unique facility capable of producing both PET flakes and recycled PET chips in a single location, handling up to 45,000 tons of discarded PET bottles annually. This results in an annual production of 32,000 tons of plastic flakes and 22,000 tons of PET chips.

The PET chips are supplied to Samyang Packaging Corp., the parent company, which holds a 50 percent share of the Korean PET container market. Samyang Packaging uses these chips as raw materials to manufacture preforms - the intermediate product in PET bottle production - along with recycled PET bottles and beverage products for consumers.

“This ‘physical recycling’ method reduces carbon emissions by 50 percent or less compared to conventional methods,” Samyang EcoTech CEO Lee Kun-ho said. “There are very few cases worldwide where such a plastic recycling system has been successfully established.”

Samyang EcoTech is preparing for a larger plastic recycling market moving forward as domestic and international regulations on plastic recycling continue to tighten.