Coca-Cola European Partners Invests in rPET Technology

CCEP Ventures, investment fund of Coca-Cola European Partners, supports the Dutch CuRe Technology. If the start-up succeeds in bringing a new recycling technology to market, Coca-Cola European Partners wants to secure access to recycled PET.

The world’s largest independent bottling company of Coca-Cola is taking another step towards the production of beverage bottles from completely recycled PET. CCEP Ventures is investing in the Dutch recycling start-up CuRe Technology. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

CuRe is working on a new type of technology for the processing of polyester residues into food grade products. With this investment, Coca-Cola European Partners wants to contribute to the realization of a recycling economy for PET. The capital injection should enable the start-up to accelerate the development of the technology from the pilot phase to market maturity.

Secure access to rPET

Once the product is ready for the market, Coca-Cola European Partners will receive the largest share of the food-grade recycled PET (rPET) obtained on this basis and intends to use it for the production of its beverage packaging. „CuRe is a technology start-up with transformation potential,“ emphasizes Joe Franses, Vice President Sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners. It opens up access to rPET material, which is needed to achieve the goal of offering beverage packaging made of 100 percent rPET.

„Polyester is one of the most reversible plastics in the world and should not be wasted,“ says Josse Kunst, Chief Commercial Officer at CuRe Technology. „The support of CCEP Ventures will enable us to start recycling opaque and difficult to be recycled food grade PET. This brings us a big step closer to our vision of being able to recycle any type of polyester over and over again“.