HELSINKI (News release) -- With a joint investment of approximately Euro 29 million by Stora Enso and Tetra Pak, a new recycling line for post-consumer beverage cartons is starting operations in Poland.

Stora Enso has invested approximately Euro 17 million into a new repulping line that will recover the carton fibers, and Tetra Pak along with Plastigram have invested a total of approximately Euro 12 million to build the new line. The line has the potential to triple the annual recycling capacity of beverage cartons in the country - from 25,000 to 75,000 tonnes - and provides scope to absorb the entire volume of beverage cartons sold in Poland, as well as additional volumes from neighbouring countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Featuring an annual capacity of 50,000 tonnes, the state-of-the-art line at Stora Enso's production unit in Ostrołęka, Poland, handles solely beverage carton material separation, detaching fibres from polymers and aluminium. The fibres are then recycled into carton board materials, effectively contributing to material circularity by turning used paper-based packaging into new paper-based packaging materials. This new paper recycling facility is complemented by Czech company Plastigram Industries, that, together with Tetra Pak, is industrialising a solution to recycle polyAl into new products.

The new line is set to ramp up recycling of beverage cartons throughout Central and Eastern Europe, signaling the beverage carton industry's willingness to support the circularity goals of the proposed EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), and showcasing the pivotal role of recycling in helping the green transition of the food packaging sector. The packaging industry has already invested approximately Euro 200 million to increase the capacity for beverage carton recycling in the EU and plans to invest a further Euro 120 million by 2027.

Tetra Pak is a world leading food processing and packaging solutions company.

Stora Enso is a leading provider of renewable products in packaging, biomaterials and wooden construction, and one of the largest private forest owners in the world.