MBA Polymers and Mueller-Guttenbrunn build recycling plant

Kematen, Austria— MBA Polymers, Inc. (MBA) of Richmond, California, and Mueller-Guttenbrunn GmbH (MG) of Amstetten, Austria held a groundbreaking for their joint venture (JV) state-of-the-art plastics recycling facility in Austria. The joint venture plans to open the 40,000 ton per year plant by December 2005.

The ceremony took place at the future plant location in Kematen, Austria. Speakers at the event included Dr. Erwin Proell the governor of Lower Austria; Mag. Helmut Miernicki, managing director of ECO Plus; Christian Mueller-Guttenbrunn, managing director of Mueller-Guttenbrunn and Dr. Michael Biddle, chairman and CEO of MBA Polymers.

Austria considers this business to be a very attractive addition to the country and has proposed significant support for the project. Dr. Proell spoke about the economic, environmental and social benefits that this new business will create for the Lower Austria province and Austria overall

MBA Polymers owns 51% of the JV and MG owns 49%. MBA brings technology, know-how, customers and suppliers to the JV while MG provides some raw material, local and national experience working in Europe, important government contacts and relations and its metal recycling background.

The new Company, called MBA Polymers Austria - Kunststoffverarbeitung GmbH, will process highly mixed plastics resulting from the legislated take-back and recycling of durable goods such as appliances and electrical equipment. This recycling is taking place on a very large scale in Europe, where the producer-responsibility legislation has been implemented.

This plant will complement a similar plant that is nearly completed and due to startup this fall in Guangzhou China with a JV MBA formed earlier this year with Guangzhou Iron and Steel Enterprises.

This new plant will be built in Kematen, Austria, which is about 100 km west of Vienna and next door to Mueller-Guttenbrunn’s advanced metal recycling operations called METRAN. METRAN will provide some of the feedstock for the new plant.

The plant is expected to come on line shortly after the August 2005 mandated implementation of the EU-wide WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment) takeback and recycling legislation.

What remains after the shredding and metal recovery processes is billions of pounds of mixed plastics. These highly mixed plastic streams represent a valuable resource, but are too complicated to be recycled by traditional techniques and are usually landfilled or incinerated.

MBA and MG consider this plant a major milestone for both companies and Europe in general because the EU currently represents the highest concentration of raw material and customers in the world for this type of plant.