iQRenew has been awarded $9.1 million in joint funding from the Australian and New South Wales governments to upgrade its SPEC recycling facility at Kundle Kundle, near Taree on the NSW Mid North Coast, significantly increasing its capacity to process hard-to-recycle plastics, including soft plastic packaging.
The infrastructure upgrade will include improvements to the existing sorting line and the installation of a new processing line with advanced optical sorting technology. Once complete, the facility will be able to process an additional 10,000 tonnes of post-consumer soft plastics annually, taking total capacity from 14,000 tonnes to 24,000 tonnes per year.
The plant will produce high-quality post-consumer recycled (PCR) resin suitable for use in various packaging applications and a wide range of other products such as FOGO caddies, GeoHex erosion control systems, Biax concrete formwork, furniture, bins, buckets, and shopping baskets, point of sale stands and supports the growth of chemical recycling in Australia. The project is expected to create up to 15 construction jobs during the build phase and support 10 ongoing roles.
Meeting an urgent need in soft plastics recycling
iQRenew general manager Graham Knowles told PKN that the funding will accelerate the company’s ability to tackle Australia’s soft plastics challenge.
The facility has already processed large volumes of the REDcycle legacy stockpile from New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland.
Knowles said the company is preparing for a rise in available feedstock following the ACCC’s draft determination to authorise Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia’s national recycling scheme.
Supermarkets are starting to switch on their return-to-store soft plastics collection, and Curby’s kerbside soft plastics collection via local councils is gaining traction. For iQrenew the focus now is ensuring there are viable end-markets for the resin it produces.
Driving demand for recycled content
While iQRenew is working with manufacturers who can make a variety of products from the soft plastic recycled resin, Knowles emphasised that developing strong domestic markets is critical.
“We need councils and brand owners to commit to buy-back options,” he said. “One example is a kitchen caddy for food organics and garden organics (FOGO) waste, the base is moulded with 50 per cent soft plastic resin. With many councils implementing FOGO collections, there’s a compelling sustainability case for purchasing caddies made from their own collected soft plastic waste.”
The Kundle Kundle expansion forms part of a broader investment in recycling infrastructure under the Recycling Modernisation Fund and the NSW Government’s Waste Less Recycle More initiative, aimed at boosting regional capacity and advancing Australia’s circular economy.
