An avalanche of submissions received from across South Africa as POLYCO extends its deadline for submissions.

 

Cape Town – A rush of submissions from companies applying for support funding for their separation, collection and sorting of post-consumer polyolefin plastic packaging projects flooded the POLYCO inbox on Friday, 16 May, as the deadline loomed for the company’s first round of project support funding this year.

POLYCO – the polyolefin recycling company that was established by the South African Polyolefin Plastic Packaging Converters with the primary aim of promoting the recycling of polyolefin plastics (i.e. plastics bearing the polymer identification codes 2, 4 and 5), announced a two week extension of its original deadline for proposals, owing to the numerous public holidays that disrupted business operations during the month of April.

“The demand for post-consumer polyolefin recyclate in South Africa requires sustainable and growing collection volumes. In order to achieve this, we invited companies involved in the separation, collection and sorting of post-consumer PP, HDPE, LDPE and LLDPE packaging materials, the opportunity to partner with POLYCO to assist in growing these volumes,” explains Chief Executive Officer of POLYCO, Mandy Naudé. Apart from advertising in key national newspapers, they also spread the word about its available funding to members of the plastics industry directly via email campaigns and through trade media.

The first call for proposals for funding covered three distinct categories that would encourage growth and development in the polyolefin recycling industry. “We were specifically looking for viable business proposals that would substantially increase the sustainable separation-at-source, collection and sorting of post-consumer polyolefin plastics that are currently being landfilled. This could either be done through supporting strategic growth and development projects, supply chain efficiency projects or visible consumer collection projects.

More than 60 proposals from across the length and breadth and from every province of South Africa were received.

“We will be spending the next four weeks carefully evaluating each submission against our Project Funding Support Criteria, before announcing the names of the projects that have made it onto the shortlist. Thereafter, representatives of POLYCO will be visiting each of these companies’ sites in order to get to know their business models and operations a bit better before the names of the successful applicants are announced in July,” Mandy says.

Concludes Mandy: “We have set ourselves the target of sending zero plastics packaging waste to landfill by 2030. Whilst this might be an ambitious target, we are confident that it can be achieved through forming the right partnerships and support of the excellent projects that have already been put in place or are being put in place by our waste collectors, recyclers and waste to energy organisations”.

POLYCO’s second “Request for Proposals” will be focused on the Recycling sector of the industry and is expected to be announced later this year.

 

For more information, contact:

Mandy Naudé
CEO : POLYCO
Tel. (078) 451-6625
Email: Mandy@polyco.co.za

 

George Blackwood
Business Support Manager
Email: george@polyco.co.za
Tel: (078)803-9221