Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) has accelerated its ambition to eliminate virgin oil-based plastic from its bottles by investing in scaling technology that offers a new lease of life for hard-to-recycle plastic polyester waste and creates high-quality rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate) for food and drinks packaging.
Through its innovation investment engine, CCEP Ventures, CCEP has invested further in the Dutch recycling start-up CuRe Technology, which uses ‘polyester rejuvenation’ to target plastics that cannot be recycled by mechanical recycling methods and prevents them from being incinerated, downcycled, or sent to landfill.
CuRe Technology’s recycling process creates high-quality rPET with a carbon footprint that is approximately 65 percent lower than virgin PET (based on CuRe’s life cycle assessment, carbon footprint reductions compared to virgin, 2022 figure), which can be used for food and drink packaging and re-processed as many times as necessary.
This innovation will offer a new lease of life for hard-to-recycle plastics, accelerating the transition to a circular economy for PET and creating a new stream of rPET.
CCEP will have access to CuRe Technology’s rPET for use in its European bottles, which a new plant will supply to start production in 2025.
This is CCEP’s second investment in CuRe Technology, following initial funding in 2020 to support CuRe Technology’s R&D roadmap and pilot plant. This phase will build on the success to date and take the technology to commercial readiness.
