Austrian packaging giant Alpla has presented its financial results for 2024 and further investment plans in plastic recycling. The company announced that investments in recycling contributed to its 2024 revenue growth. Alpla reported a 4% increase in revenue, reaching €4.9 billion ($5.05 billion) compared to €4.7 billion a year earlier. Alpla's management stresses that its commitment to the circular economy is ‘starting to pay off’.

Alpla is investing at least €50 million a year in plastic recycling, with a focus on increasing the proportion of recycled materials in its products. By 2025, the company plans to achieve a 25 per cent share of recycled materials in its packaging, and to double its recycling capacity to 700,000 t per year by 2030. ‘The use of high-quality recycled materials from our own production is complemented by reducing packaging weight and recycling-friendly design,’ the company emphasises.

Alpla currently produces recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) and high-density polyethylene (rHDPE) at 13 plants located in nine countries. In 2024, the company opened a new PET recycling plant in South Africa and is operating or building PET and HDPE recycling plants in Germany, Poland, Spain, Romania, Mexico and Thailand, among others. A new plant is scheduled to open in Thailand in 2025, which is expected to strengthen the company's presence in the Asia-Pacific region, which offers ‘huge potential’ thanks to lower labour and energy costs.

Alpla has reached a milestone with 200 plants already in place worldwide and the creation of 1,000 new jobs, bringing the number of employees to 24,350 in 46 countries. Dynamic growth in South America, Africa and the Middle East, as well as recovering demand in North and Central America, contributed to the successes in 2024. In Europe, the company is facing the challenges of increasing EU regulations and high labour costs, counteracting them by increasing efficiency, developing recycling and introducing new products.

Despite global plastics production growth of 3.4% in 2023, Europe saw a decline in both virgin plastics (down 8.3%) and recycled plastics (down 7.8%) output. Europe's share of the global market has decreased to 12%, highlighting the challenges facing the region. Although Europe maintains a positive trade balance in value, it has become a net importer of resins and finished plastic products, with resin exports falling by 25.4% between 2020 and 2023.

‘Plastic packaging shapes the lives of billions of people,’ said Philipp Lehner. ‘As a technological market leader, we are making our products ever lighter and more sustainable. We will continue to invest in this worldwide.’ Alpla announces further investments in innovation, sustainability and global partnerships to meet the growing demands of the market.

Image source: alpla.com

Recently, Cefic (the European Chemical Industry Council, established in 1972, serves as a forum for large, medium, and small chemical companies across Europe) released a competitiveness study highlighting the severity of the situation for the EU chemical industry: over 11 million t of capacity closures have already been announced for 2023—2024, affecting 21 major areas.

The study examines how the EU chemical industry competes with the USA, China, Japan, Brazil, India, and the Middle East, as well as the key competitiveness factors in Europe, both cost-related and non-cost-related. The report concludes that the competitive position of the European industry — an essential building block of daily life — has weakened due to multiple factors, ranging from high energy, environmental, and regulatory costs to administrative barriers related to innovation and human capital. The latter often leads to delayed investments or decisions to invest outside Europe.

‘For the sake of our industry and the 1.2 million workers employed in it, we need decisive and urgent action,’ commented Marco Mensink, CEO of Cefic. ‘Reducing energy costs, ensuring access to critical virgin materials, and stimulating innovation are absolutely essential. If our industry collapses, entire supply chains will follow: healthcare, automotive, renewable energy, and the breakthrough technologies of the Green Deal, which are necessary for the transition to renewable energy. We are saying this again, louder and clearer: for Europe's future, we need the new decision-makers in the EU to act now!’