Business with a vision

Long gone are the days when we sipped soft drinks from glass bottles and returned the empty bottles to our neighbourhood vendors for recycling and refilling at factory facilities.

We now drink water, soda and fruit juices -- all from PET bottles. Once the drinks are consumed, the PET bottles -- millions of them -- litter the environment and end up in the landfills.   

PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of polyester family. It is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquid and food, thermoforming for manufacturing, and in combination with glass fibre for engineering resins.

STARTLING STATISTICS

Bangladesh spends $225 million a year on import of more than 1.4 lakh tonnes of PET resins for producing PET products and synthetic yarn.

On an average, 400 crore PET bottles are manufactured every year in Bangladesh and most of them are discarded after being used only once.

RECYCLING PET BOTTLES

Meet Khadem Mahmud Yusuf, a Bangladeshi entrepreneur having long experience of working in Silicon Valley, who came up with a different idea about used PET bottles.

A news report on export of waste PET bottles to China in 2011 encouraged him to look into the prospects of recycling PET bottles at home, and saving money spent on import of PET resins.

Khadem Mahmud thought of minimising the disposal of plastic waste into the environment, curbing pollution and creating jobs.

Five years down the line, Khadem Mahmud's company -- Bangladesh Petrochemical Company Limited (BPCL) -- is running the country's first and only PET recycling factory in Narayanganj.

The factory now recycles 93,000 cubic metres of used PET bottles, which would otherwise be dumped into the environment, and helps reduce emission of 13,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas every year.   

The country's PET industry was fully dependent on imported PET resins until the BPCL provided bottle makers with the option of sourcing PET resins locally; thus helping the country save foreign currency.

"We started a trial run at the end of last year and had a formal commercial launch in July this year with a monthly production of a modest 100 tonnes of PET resins,” said Khadem Mahmud, the BPCL managing director.

“We took the production to 250 tonnes this October and are eyeing to take it to 400 tonnes a month," he told The Daily Star. 

Khadem Mahmud, who holds degrees in electrical engineering from Washington University and Texas A&M University, said the state-of-the-art factory of the BPCL is provided with 350 tonnes of used PET bottles a month through sourcing hubs at Hazaribagh and Basabo in the capital and 57 suppliers from across the country.

"After spending 17 years in the USA and working in several Silicon Valley firms for 11 years, I came back home in 2005 and then served in senior level positions in some companies here. As the idea occurred to me after reading a news report in 2011, I founded the BPCL in 2012," recalled Khadem Mahmud.

The BPCL has received equity and debt financing from foreign and local prominent investors such as US venture capital firm DEFTA Partners, NFM Energy Singapore Pte Ltd, IDCOL and Trust Bank Ltd.

Before purchasing land for his factory, he visited Germany, Austria and Italy in 2012 to learn about PET recycling technologies and also to source machines.

BPCL'S TARGET

The BPCL, which started its operation in July 2012, has set up a plant capable of producing 5,000 tonnes of recycled PET resins per year by using used PET bottles as raw materials.

The capacity would be increased to 10,000 tonnes next year and 25,000 tonnes in 2018-19, hoped Khadem Mahmud.

He said the plant, which employs 200 workers, has sludge compactor, a caustic recovery unit and fine particle recovery system for ensuring application of best practices in the industry.

"We reuse 90 percent of our factory's used water after it is treated by a Waste Water Treatment Plant. We practise 3R [recycle, reuse and reduce] principle," said Khadem Mahmud, who served in the past, among others, at the Nokia Siemens Networks, and National Semiconductor Corporation, USA.

GETTING READY MARKET

Within four months of the launch of its commercial production, the BPCL got almost a ready market to sell the recycled PET resins, which are at least 20 percent cheaper than the imported ones.

To name a few; AST Beverage, Meghna Group of Industries and Olympic Industries Limited are already on the BPCL's list of clientele that procure recycled PET resins for bottling and packaging.