Plastic waste eliminator HPL Additives Ltd plans to set up its new plant in coastal Gujarat with an investment of up to ₹200 crore in the next couple of years.
“We currently have three plants in Faridabad, Haryana, and one in Deerabasi, Punjab, with a combined annual capacity to manufacture up to 10,000 tonnes of additives and other produces. Our fourth plant is proposed to be set up in Gujarat to manufacture and secure supply of raw materials for our backward integration process as part of expansion,” Umesh Anand, Joint Managing Director, told
The company is actively looking at setting up the plant at Dahej in South Gujarat. The company manufactures polymer additives and speciality and industry chemicals.
He said HPL Additives, founded in 1964 at Faridabad, plans to double its turnover by 2020. Nearly 55 per cent of its revenues comes from exports to over 50 countries in Europe, the Americas and Far East Asia.
New additive
The company is all set to launch for the first time in India HIGREN OBA, an advanced oxo-biodegradable additive, which, when added during the manufacturing process, induces faster degradation and biodegradation of plastic and convert it into compost in less than five years, which may otherwise take decades or even centuries.
For this, HPL Additives, which has around 75 per cent share in India’s polymer additives and specialty chemicals industry, has acquired licence from Canada’s EPI Inc for manufacturing Oxo-Biodegradable Additives (OBA).
Its 3000-mt plant commenced production at Faridabad in 2017. Degradation of OBA-treated plastics is accelerated by thermal, photo-UV light (both available in sunlight) and mechanical stress when pressed under the soil. “Once you throw out the OBA-treated plastic bottle, for instance, it gets exposed to sunlight and slowly buries under the soil and, within five years, it could be biodegraded and turned into compost,” he added.
India annually produces an estimated 65 million tonnes (MT) of plastic waste, about half of which is biodegradable. In the wake of absence of adequate recycling plants due to heavy investments involved, this plastic waste pollutes the earth’s environment.
Of the 65 MT, just 45 MT of this plastic waste in India is assumed to be collected annually and only a third of it is actually treated. Thus, nearly 50 MT of plastic waste is added to India’s environment annually.