Coca-Cola Europacific Partners makes further investment in recycling technology to accelerate the elimination of virgin plastic in its bottles

Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) is accelerating its ambition to eliminate virgin oil-based plastic from its bottles through an investment in scaling technology that offers a new lease of life for hard-to-recycle plastic polyester waste, and creates high quality rPET for food and drink packaging.

Through its innovation investment engine, CCEP Ventures, CCEP is making a further investment in recycling start-up CuRe Technology, which uses ‘polyester rejuvenation’ to target plastics that cannot be recycled by mechanical recycling methods and prevents them from being incinerated, downcycled or sent to landfill.

CuRe Technology’s recycling process creates high-quality rPET with a carbon footprint that is approximately 65% lower than virgin PET, (based on CuRe’s life cycle assessment, carbon footprint reductions compared to virgin: 2022 figure) which can be used for food and drink packaging and re-processed as many times as necessary. This will offer a new lease of life for hard-to-recycle plastics, accelerating the transition to a circular economy for PET and creating a new stream of rPET.

CCEP will have access to CuRe Technology’s rPET for use in its bottles in Europe, which will be supplied by a new plant set to start production in 2025.

This is CCEP’s second investment in CuRe Technology, following initial funding in 2020 to support CuRe Technology’s R&D roadmap and pilot plant. This phase will build on success to-date and take the technology to commercial readiness.