Posted September 8, 2016
By Devin Steele (DSteele@eTextileCommunications.com)
REIDSVILLE, N.C. – Unifi, Inc. leaders, employees and government officials celebrated the official opening of the company’s expanded REPREVE® Bottle Processing Center here Wednesday.
The more than $28 million investment will help Unifi achieve its goal of vertical integration for its REPREVE recycled product line, the company said. About 80,000 square feet of the 150,000 square foot facility, along with accompanying equipment, are new. In addition, 87 jobs are being added here, with about half of those having already been filled, according Unifi President Tom Caudle.
N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory was among state officials who toured the state-of-the-art center, which has the capacity to produce 75 million pounds of bottle flake per year, Unifi said.
“Wow – this is the best of North Carolina right here,” McCrory said during a ceremony. “You have an innovative company that anticipates as opposed to reacts, a company that makes things, builds things and is going to employ 90 more people in Rockingham County. And it didn’t happen by accident – it happened first of all by great leadership at this great company. And the employees who work here also made this happen. I know this company wouldn’t continue to expand in Rockingham County and in Reidsville unless they had great talent here.”
At the facility, Unifi brings in purchased, baled PET bottles from materials recovery facilities across the Eastern U.S. Here, undesirable materials are sorted and filtered using multiple processes to ensure that only the proper, high-quality bottles are kept for use, the company said. The center then removes labels, debris and caps from the remaining PET bottles, which are chopped into flakes, washed, dried and bagged for use in the production of REPREVE, or sold to other companies for a variety of consumer packaging applications, such as thermoformed food-grade packaging like cups and takeout containers, as well as non-film applications such as strapping and film.
Expanded Bottle Processing Center
Unifi’s sustainability journey continues
The recycled chips are shipped 66 miles to the company’s 130,000-square-foot Yadkinville, N.C., yarn-manufacturing plant, which opened in 2011. REPREVE yarn can be found in products ranging from apparel and hosiery to automotive and industrial applications and is used by some of the world’s largest brands, including Patagonia, Levi’s, Haggar, Nike, Quiksilver and Ford. Also, more than 400,000 college students have graduated in gowns made from REPREVE, with about 27 recycled bottles being used for each gown.
“Thanks to the hard work and diligence of everyone who has been part of this project, we have created a bottle processing operation that is unlike any other in the world,” Caudle said. “Everyone at Unifi is dedicated to producing the highest quality and the most innovative and sustainable products for our customers around the world, which has been the foundation for our success over the past several years and will continue as a source of growth for the company in the years ahead.”
REPREVE helping to keep Unifi's vision clear
Nearly 10 years ago, Unifi started a journey to make REPREVE “one of the most earth-friendly fabric ingredients in the world,” according to Jay Hertwig, Unifi’s vice president of Global Brand Sales, Marketing & Product Development. Since then, REPREVE has become the company’s flagship brand and fastest-growing product, he added.
“We have transformed more than 4 billion recycled bottles into REPREVE fiber, and we’ve only just begun,” he said.
As demand for eco-friendly materials continues to rise, Unifi has responded by increasing capacity for REPREVE production in Yadkinville, N.C., which will soon reach 100 million pounds annually, Hertwig added.
“Today, less than 32 percent of plastic water bottles used in the U.S. are recycled, which is far below the 83 percent recycling rate in China and the 48 percent recycling rate in Western Europe,” he said. “At Unifi, we will work to increase the recycling rate here in the U.S. and continue to turn bottles into fibers that go into products and brands that people use every day.”
Since inception, Unifi has recycled more than 4 billion plastic water bottles into REPREVE, the company said.
“Our vision for the company is simple: That one day, all polyester made by Unifi will be recycled and the REPREVE bottle processing center will play an important role in turning that vision into reality,” Caudle said.
Rockingham County provided a $25,000 matching grant that allowed the processing center expansion to qualify for a Building Reuse Grant of $500,000 from the North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority under the Rural Economic Development Division at the N.C. Dept. of Commerce. To support the expansion, a Community Development Block Grant in the amount of $861,000 from the N.C. Dept. of Commerce was awarded to the city of Reidsville for a larger sewer line to replace aged infrastructure.