PET diamonds for the Indian flake market
India is one of the rare countries where the estimated bottle collection is in the range of 80-90%. This is probably one of the highest in the world. There is an informal organised system in place since the last 20 years. Due to the weight of each bottle, there is a reasonable value for collection. The major challenge in plastic waste is segregation at source. If waste is properly segregated into different categories, almost everything can be recycled or put to a better use.
However, a large percentage of the plastic waste generated still ends up in landfills or in water resources. It will be a much cleaner and greener world, if 100% of our plastic waste is given a new life and a new value. If we, as responsible global citizens, want to leave this world a better place for future generations, then we have to take a proactive stance to buy sustainable products, ethical brands, clean up the beaches and be mindful of where and how to dispose of products. This gives hope for a better future, where there is no “waste” but just another life for the material.
The Mumbai-based company AeroFibre is in its third generation of plastic waste business. In the late 80s, the family-owned business started in the recycling and processing of PET industrial waste. In 2008, AeroFibre commissioned the fibre recycling plant to further process the industrial waste. “After completing my graduation in UIUC, I decided to join the family business in 2009. I was excited about the recycling of polyester waste and was elected to head this business. In 2017, we commissioned a state-of-the-art recycling plant that has the capacity to process 18,000 mta of hollow and hollow conjugate fibre. We are the first company in India to have two German bottle sorters in our wash-line. Our main focus was to enhance the quality of flakes which will result in higher fibre quality,” stated Director Mr Ankit Jain.
In 2021, the company realised that there was an increasing demand for high quality flakes for bottle-to-bottle and bottle-to-filament segments; and there was a paucity of good quality PET flakes in the market. To fill this gap, Aero Fibres installed an advanced laser sorting machine from Germany to process flakes which are as clean and consistent as diamonds – hence the brand is called DiamondPET Flakes.
The DiamondPET flakes provide a consistent high purity value of fewer than 100 ppm. “We create this with the help of dual automatic bottle sorters, manual sorting as well as a final check with an automatic laser sorter. Just like high pressure makes diamonds, we employ heat washing and pressure sorting to make diamonds out of trash,” Mr Ankit Jain explained.
He continued, “We have a team that is 150 strong today who work on three shifts to produce PET flakes that are of precise and consistent quality. We have installed an effluent treatment plant to reuse and recycle all our water used in the PET flake production. Our plant qualifies as a zero liquid discharge site. We also generate a portion of power needs via solar power. Our goal is to produce high value products from plastic waste. To that end we want to process as much of the by-products generated while processing the PET bottles – from segregating caps and wrapper, we now wash and produce granules that can be made into injection moulded products like crates and other items.”
The goal for AeroFibre is that they want to produce the best value for their customers, treat team as family and give back to the communities that the company is a part of. AeroFibre believes in doing well by doing good. “Hopefully, one day in the near future, we will be part of the reason India will be able to recycle 100% of plastic waste, creating value from waste.”
