India’s largest private sector company, Reliance Industries (RIL) plans to set up a recycled polyester staple fiber (PSF) manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh. The facility will be built and operated by India’s leading plastic recycling and waste management company, Srichakra Ecotex India. The facility will double RIL’s recycling capacity to 5 billion post-consumer PET bottles. The company is focusing on sustaining India’s post-consumer PET recycling rate which is currently the highest in the world.

The expansion of PET recycling capacity is part of Mukesh Ambani’s vision to transform the company’s legacy business into sustainable, circular and net zero carbon materials business and support the entrepreneurs to take risk throughout the value chain. RIL currently recycles PET bottles at its Barabanki, Hoshiarpur and Nagothane plants. The post-consumer PET bottles are used as a raw material for manufacturing re-cycled polyester fibre. The fibers manufactured through this process are branded as Recron GreenGold and RIL through its Hub Excellence Partners (HEP) (selected downstream mills) manufactures R|Elan GreenGold fabrics, one of the greenest fabrics in the world.

At present, RIL converts more than 2 billion post-consumer PET bottles into fibers annually. With the addition of Srichakra capacity, RIL will be instrumental in converting about 5 billion used PET bottles into value-added fibers.