ORPET plans $10 million recycling plant near St. Helens

State-of-the-art plastic bottle recycling plant on Port of St. Helens property promises to deliver 50 new jobs

By Stover E Harger III

The South County Spotlight, Oct 29, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

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An Oregon business partnership plans to build a $10 million state-of-the-art plastic bottle recycling plant on Port of St. Helens-owned property, promising to create 50 new jobs when it begins operation next year.

When the state amended its 1972 bottle bill Jan. 1 to include non-carbonated plastic water bottles, commonly made from the resin polyethylene terephthalate, also called by its acronym PET, an increasing amount of people started recycling the containers to reclaim their 5-cent deposits.

This trend caught the eye of two regional plastic industry leaders who, along with the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, which administers the state’s bottle bill, formed the business partnership ORPET earlier this year.

The ORPET bottle recycling plant, which will be the first of its kind in the region, is expected to open in the second quarter of 2010. It will be able to handle up to 25 million pounds of PET material a year, much more than is currently collected by the beverage recycling co-op. The PET will be sorted, washed and grinded before being marketed to Pacific Northwest compa-nies that use it to make new bottles or a myriad other products that commonly use polyester fiber, such as clothing or carpet.

For the last few years, ORPET partners Tom Leaptrott, president of the Vancouver, Wash.,-based plastic packaging material company, Quantum Leap, and Dennis Denton, president of Denton Plastics in Portland, discussed teaming up and investing in a PET recycling plant.

But they hit a roadblock: There were just not enough of the bottles being recycled to justify the project.

Now that the amount of recycled plastic bottles has tripled, said Leaptrott, the pair jumped at the opportunity. They quickly teamed up with the recylcing co-op, which will sell the plant raw material, and leased land at the Multnomah Industrial Park controlled by the Port of St. Helens.

“We are going at 100 miles per hour right now to make this thing happen,” said Leaptrott.

Construction is set to begin in January. Once it is built next year, equipment will temporarily be stored in a warehouse until the main facility is completed in 2011.

The 90,000-square—foot main building will showcase “green” design features, including solar panels, a green roof, rainwater reclamation and other energy conservation attributes.

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