A First from Korteks, Both in Europe and in Turkey
Korteks, one of the group companies of Zorlu Textile Group, which is pursuing its new generation textile approach based on a circular economy standing on innovation, is getting ready to produce polyester yarns made out of purely recycled plastic bottles in the Polymer Recycling Plant, which will be launched at the end of this year. This will be a first for both Turkey and Europe.
Korteks is preparing to engage its new investment, the Polymer Recycling Facility Project, as of the last quarter of the current year. The company will produce ‘RPET Chips’, which is the raw material of polyester yarn, from PET bottles and other production waste yarns and turn them into filament polyester yarn.
A Monthly Production Capacity of 600 Tons
With the facility, which will have a monthly production capacity of 600 tons to be manufactured within a total closed area of 17 thousand m2, Korteks will be able to produce with zero production waste in virgin PES yarn facilities. The recycled polyester yarns to be produced can be used in many different industries from clothing to home textiles and automotive.
Working with the goal of reducing the environmental impact day by day, Korteks will take an important step to reduce the environmental impact created by plastic wastes, which have become a global problem, while using the existing resources more efficiently through the Polymer Recycling Facility.
‘‘We protect the nature through sustainable products’’
Necat Altın underlines that R&D studies and innovation are the most important factors to ensure and maintain the resulting leadership in technical textiles, automotive textiles, and functional products markets in Turkey, Europe, and Middle East textile markets, and he finalized his statement with the following, ‘‘We continue our investments in R&D and innovation at full speed without interruption. We have employed 40 engineers in our Korteks R&D centers. We listen to the needs of the consumers in our researches, and our R&D engineers develop products based on the feedback we receive. Our designers create product styles accordingly. These products, patented by us, offer important clues about the products of the future in our industry. Thanks to smart textile products, we contribute to the protection endeavors of the environment and thus, our competitive power with the rest of the world gradually grows. Innovation, design, and R&D studies constitute our basic guide to the point of creating the textile of the future. As Korteks, the most important item on our agenda is to have a sustainable world. We adopt an environmentalist production approach in order to achieve such a world and produce products from PLA yarns obtained from agricultural products with high starch content such as corn and sugar cane. At the same time, with our Polymer Recycling Facility investment, we will use recycled polyester filament yarn, where waste PET bottles are used as raw materials, and we will use waste PET bottles and yarn waste again in the production of polyester yarn while protecting the nature and contributing to the circular economy.’’
