Abilene’s $40M plant to recycle for Nestle Waters

ABILENE – CarbonLite Industries LLC will begin construction in 2013 on a $40 million bottle-to-bottle plant and employ 100 people at Five Points Business Park.

The Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA) approved a $6.2 million incentive package for CarbonLite. The company plans to invest $35 million in equipment and estimates an annual payroll of $3.6 million, according to the DCOA.

The 1.6 billion used bottles taken in each year will be turned into a high-grade raw material to make new bottles for Nestle Waters North America, according to CarbonLite. The plant will have capacity to reprocess 80 million pounds of used bottles annually. Production is scheduled to begin in late 2014.

The company’s $58 million, 220,000-sf California plant has 130 employees who reprocess more than 2 billion, or 100 million pounds, of used plastics bottles a year.

Read more at the Abilene Reporter-News, Environmental Leader and Plastics News.