Australia's biggest recycling company, Visy, has commissioned the country's first oxygen-fuelled glass furnace at its recycling and remanufacturing facility in Penrith, Western Sydney.
The $150m furnace, which uses less than half the energy than the one it replaced, was officially opened today (18 July) by New South Wales premier Chris Minns and Visy chairman Anthony Pratt
The energy saving, according to Pratt, is “the equivalent of saving enough energy to heat over 32,000 Sydney homes every year.”
Visy’s Penrith site is the only glass bottle and jar manufacturing factory in New South Wales. It produces over 800 million glass containers every year in support of Australia’s leading food and beverage brands like Vegemite, Cottee’s Jam, Toohey's New and Bundaberg Ginger Beer.
The facility will use advanced recycled cullet pre-heating technology to significantly increase the use of recycled glass in Australia's glass bottle manufacturing sector.
“This new technology is part of our program to make glass containers with an average 70 per cent recycled content across Australia and New Zealand,” Pratt said.
The factory takes recycled glass from household recycle bins and the Return and Earn container deposit scheme to make the new bottles and jars. Visy is Australia’s largest recycling company, and partners with councils across Australia to process approximately 40 per cent of Australia’s kerbside recycling bins.
“At Visy, we’re not just manufacturers – we’re in the landfill avoidance business because recycling is an important weapon against climate change,” said Pratt, echoing the keynote presentation he made earlier in the week at the Global Food Forum.
“We’re investing in low energy technology, as well as high paying, green collar jobs, and boosting Australia’s manufacturing capability.”
New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, welcomed the investment in Western Sydney manufacturing.
“We welcome Visy’s vote of confidence in Western Sydney and NSW. The bottles and jars made here will end up in the hands of millions of Aussies each year,” said Minns.
The investment is part of Pratt’s 2021 commitment to invest $2 billion over the ensuing decade to reduce landfill, help fight climate change while creating and sustaining thousands of green collar Australian manufacturing jobs.
