Polystyrene recycling plant closes

After more than 16 years of operation, the Canadian Polystyrene Recycling Association’s PS recycling plant in Mississauga, Ont., suspended operations in December. The facility, opened at a time when plastics were often seen as impossible to reprocess, has been a standard bearer for polymers recycling in this country. However the viability of a plant supplying a recycled version of a commodity plastic – and one for which world demand has dropped in recent years – has been problematic recently, and a high Canadian dollar had an additional impact. The plant also had to shut down for some weeks after a fire two years ago.

"Our challenge has been that we're an industry association,” said Roman Talkowski, CPRA’s chairman. “To succeed today, you have to be entrepreneurial and highly adaptive to changing market conditions," CPRA's members - resin producers, product manufacturers, distributors and end-users of polystyrene products - invested close to $7-million in recycling equipment over the years. Over that period, CPRA has had to contend with high fixed costs, single material dependence, and blue-box volumes that fall far short of capacity. The city of Toronto has been planning to accept polystyrene in its blue box program sometime in 2008, and CPRA believed that the expected 1,500 tonnes of material would help ensure its sustainability. In anticipation of higher volumes, it spent $300,000 on new sorting equipment earlier in 2007. But the relative fall of the US dollar resulted in a 30 per cent decline in revenue.

"Even though we had made a significant investment, we couldn't hold on until Toronto's volumes kicked in,” Talkowski says. “We became a victim to timing. We simply cannot continue to sustain the operation,"

CPRA has met with its financial advisors to determine the best course of action. After suspending operations it filed a notice of intention to file a proposal. It is already working with others in the industry to try to put in place a more viable polystyrene recycling operation responsive to market forces and, therefore, more competitive than the Association business model. Over the short term, it will use brokers to take the recycled materials. Ultimately, the goal is to have CPRA's equipment purchased and integrated into an established plant where PS recycling is part of a more comprehensive recovery program.

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association’s Quebec region has let go its executive director, Pierre Fillion, and is looking for a replacement. Former CPIA national president Pierre Dubois is filling in as acting executive director in the interim.
www.cpia.ca