APR Plastics to open soft plastics recycling facility in Victoria

After years of planning, APR Plastics is on the verge of opening a groundbreaking soft plastics recycling facility in Victoria.

The saga of Australia’s soft plastics has been a headline-grabbing story of crisis and collapse, with the abrupt closure of a national recycling scheme leaving thousands of tonnes of material without a home.

Yet, amid the headlines of stockpiles and stalled progress, a quiet revolution has been unfolding in Victoria’s west. For years, a company has been methodically working to build a complete end-to-end solution, proving that the dream of circular soft plastics is not just possible but imminent.

At a new facility in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, the final pieces of the puzzle are coming together, promising to transform a national problem into a viable, circular solution.

APR Plastics Managing Director Darren Thorpe is a man of vision. For more than two and a half years, he has navigated the complex regulatory landscape to secure a development licence for the pyrolysis plant.

That licence, approved earlier in 2025 by the Victorian Environment Protection Authority (EPA), is the critical first step in what has been a long and arduous journey.

A pilot trial at APR’s Dandenong South facility in 2022 was a success but reinforced the need for a solution at a much larger scale to handle the sheer volume of soft plastics.

“It’s been really, really frustrating but also very exhilarating, because it’s here,” Darren says.

“It’s starting to gain real momentum.”

The facility, located at Bacchus Marsh, was partly funded by a $250,000 Sustainability Victoria grant. It will house a 10-tonne-a-day unit, giving APR Plastics the operating know-how to expand elsewhere.

The technology at the heart of the plant is pyrolysis, a process that uses heat to break down soft plastics in the absence of oxygen. The result is pyrolysis oil, a synthetic crude that can be further refined and processed into feedstock for the packaging industry, creating a truly circular loop.

“I want to be able to turn this humble little confectionary packaging into the same product without using 100 per cent fossil crude,” Darren says.

“The driving force is to be able to take these items that are non-recyclable right now and turn them into a recyclable outcome. Circular is what I want.”

For Darren, the mission is to stop using 100 per cent fossil crude for soft plastics packaging by providing a viable, recycled alternative.

The company’s vision for a full-scale operation would produce 35 million litres of synthetic crude annually. And while Darren describes it as a “drop in the ocean”, he sees any offset of fossil crude as a win.

“That means there’s at least 35 million litres of fossil crude we don’t have to manufacture.”

Australia uses about 70 billion pieces of soft “scrunchable” plastics, such as food wrappers, each year, according to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).

One million tonnes of that annual plastic consumption are single-use plastics, 84 per cent of which are sent to landfill and only 13 per cent are recycled.

The collapse of in-store collection service REDcycle in November 2022, which uncovered thousands of tonnes of soft plastic stockpiled in warehouses across two states, forced the packaging and recycling industries and the government to look at how to build ongoing sustainable pathways for soft plastic.

Darren says one of the greatest challenges is the public’s perception of plastic recycling. The REDcycle collapse has created a trust deficit, and he’s determined not to repeat those mistakes.

“The community wants to do the right thing,” he says.

“A soft plastics drop-off day in my municipality earlier this year attracted about 800 cars, so we know communities want soft plastics recycling, but they’ve lost trust.

“We want to rebuild that trust. We just have to make sure that we’ve got everything in place, so it doesn’t fall over.”

That has meant a meticulous and collaborative process to build a complete supply chain from collection through to remanufacture, ensuring the produced oil has a home.

APR’s kerbside division receives soft plastics from voluntary stewardship programs and subscription platforms. That material is then transported to the company’s new sorting facility to be separated into the correct feedstock for the pyrolysis plant.

Darren says a methodical, line-by-line approach to sorting ensures the purity of the feedstock, which is essential for producing high-quality pyrolysis oil.

Most soft plastics, such as chip packets and chocolate wrappers, are multilayered. The outside is polypropylene (PP), but the inside is metallised PP film acting as a barrier that protects the integrity of the food. Traditional mechanical recycling processes cannot separate the layers, so soft plastics have been considered a contaminant.

APR’s process will separate the polypropylene from the barrier film. The PP will be turned into a vapour and then condensed into an oil, which will be sent to a refinery to be further processed so it can be reused in food-grade plastic products.

This attention to detail has also been applied to securing a market for the end product. In May, APR announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Aster Chemicals and Energy, Taghleef Industries Group and Pro-Pac Group.

Aster will process the pyrolysis oil into olefins, which will then be converted into PP resin before Taghleef manufactures it into PP film. Pro-Pac will complete the circular value chain by manufacturing the film into snack food wrappers.

While the initial 10-tonne plant is set to begin operations and produce sellable oil by the first quarter of 2026, the company is already focused on phase two, which will dramatically expand production capacity. This, in turn, will be a stepping stone to 100-tonne-a-day operations.

Darren’s dedication is fuelled by a singular vision: to create a circular economy for soft plastics that are currently considered non-recyclable.

The goal is to prove that these products, which are fit for purpose and essential for reducing food waste, have a valuable second life.

This, he says, will require significant infrastructure and, crucially, a mandatory packaging reform for all brands.

In 2024, DCCEEW consulted on future regulations to reduce packaging waste, with potential mandatory reforms such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) being considered.

“We’re going to need the packaging reform to be made mandatory,” Darren says. “The 85 per cent of brands that are now sitting back could potentially go on a free ride, and we need them all to be saying, ‘we’re in’.”

“We’re in” is an ethos shared across the APR group which includes Australian Paper Recovery and APR Kerbside.

Darren acknowledges the dedication of his team for the success so far and says while it’s often been a “long hard slog”, they are united in the belief that this is an opportunity to make a difference.

“This is a family-run business, and the values that people bring to our business are important; they’re critical to the strength and the development of where we’ve come from.”

But the mission is about more than just a single plant; it’s about building a national framework.

Darren believes that by demonstrating a viable, profitable, and truly circular solution, the wider industry will be compelled to follow suit. The APR Plastics facility is not just a plant; it is a proof of concept, a blueprint for the future of soft plastics in Australia.

“We had to find a solution for soft plastics,” Darren says. “We’ve done that. Now we’ve just got to get the first one going and then scale up methodically.

For more information, visit: www.aprplastics.com.au