Nampak Wiegand Glass invests R100m in glass recycling facility

Nampak Wiegand Glass, a partnership between South African packaging company Nampak and German glass manufacturer Wiegand Glass, is investing over R100-million in a glass recycling facility, as part of its commitment to increase recycling rates across all forms of packaging.

The building of the glass recycling facility started earlier this month and is scheduled for completion in March 2010. The plant is based on a site at the Nampak Wiegand Glass factory in Roodekop, Johannesburg.

The company said glass recycling amounted to some 20% of the industry’s total outputs, and that it hoped to grow this figure to around 50% by 2011/12 through this initiative.

The facility was expected to meet all Nampak Wiegand Glass’ cullet supply needs in the future.

The new glass recycling facility will accommodate state-of-the-art Binder equipment from Austria. The equipment will break, clean and sort glass according to colour. The glass will be sourced from post-industrial and post-consumer glass packaging from a network of agents and informal collectors.

The company will use all of the cullet in its glass-making operations.

Nampak Wiegand Glass MD Stoney Steenkamp said that some 25 direct jobs would be created when the recycling facility is fully operational. A further minimum 1 000 informal jobs would be made available through agents and informal collectors.

Nampak Wiegand Glass is a founding member of the Glass Recycling Company, an industry body responsible for marketing the recycling of glass packaging.