- Bankinter’s Investment Banking subsidiary and Plenium Partners seal the agreement with REPETCO to invest in a pioneering facility for the recycling of multilayer PET plastics, which provides a solution to a previously unresolved problem through a clean, sustainable and profitable proprietary technology.
- REPETCO is contemplating an investment of 55 million euros in its factory in Albacete, which will be operational by the end of the year, will generate 200 direct and indirect jobs and will be able to recycle up to 100,000 tons of plastic per year.
Bankinter Investment and Plenium Partners are moving forward with their latest alternative investment vehicle, Ecualia, focused on key sectors for national and European environmental objectives and the circular economy. Thus, they have sealed an agreement to invest in REPETCO, a company that has developed in its Albacete factory a proprietary technology that provides a solution to a currently unresolved problem: the recycling of multilayer PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) containers for post-food consumption.
It is a first level asset within the circular economy and has a great contribution to make in the reuse of general purpose plastics for food packaging. Multilayer PET is one of the most complex materials in the recycling process, as this type of packaging has until now been incinerated or buried. REPETCO provides a pioneering solution with its own clean, sustainable and profitable technology, which represents a revolution in the field of recycling and promotes the circular economy thanks to the recovery of the raw material and its reuse by the food industry and other sectors.
Ecualia’s first investment is another example of the success of the strategy established in Bankinter Investment’s alternative investment vehicles, in this case again with Plenium Partners as manager, with a team of great capacity and experience in the identification and execution of acquisitions with high added value for investors.
A pioneer factory
The REPETCO factory in which Ecualia is investing is under construction in the Romica industrial site in Albacete and is expected to be operational by the end of this year. It contemplates an investment of 55 million euros and the creation of 50 direct jobs and up to 200 indirect jobs. The new plant will have a maximum input capacity of 100,000 tons of plastic material per year.
The factory’s design includes all the environmental protection measures required by current regulations on spills, emissions and waste management, and has also incorporated all the latest cutting-edge technology for water treatment and raw material storage to ensure legal compliance.
The project for these facilities recently won the “SME Award for Innovation and Sustainability” in the awards given by the specialized innovation publication Retina, promoted by Grupo Prisa, in collaboration with Capgemini. The award highlights the advantage provided by this technology developed by REPETCO, which avoids the use of chemicals, reduces emissions and favors the circular economy.
REPETCO, the sustainable solution to an urgent problem
The recycling of single-layer PET plastic, such as bottles, is a less complex reality in terms of recycling, but the recycling of multilayer PET plastic, which is very common in food packaging, has yet to be solved. This posed a major problem in terms of contamination, as it is estimated that more than one million tons of this material are discarded in Europe every year, which end up being buried or incinerated.
In response, REPETCO created a world-leading solution using a unique process of delamination of the plastic layers. This new technology makes it possible to recycle the plastic material of all the layers and produce rPE/rPET pellets, thus favoring their subsequent reuse.
Recently launched by Ecualia
Last week, Bankinter Investment and Plenium Partners launched Ecualia, the previously mentioned new alternative investment vehicle, to offer the bank’s high net worth clients investments linked to sectors that will be a fundamental element in advancing the environmental roadmap established in the long term, both at the European and national levels, as well as in the circular economy. The initial forecast is to raise a volume of capital close to 175 million euros.
Ecualia is the vehicle that Bankinter Investment and Plenium Partners jointly launched in June. The fund, distributed among Bankinter clients and managed by Plenium Partners, is dedicated to investing in infrastructure and projects with an impact on the real economy and linked to the main European environmental initiatives, including sectors such as sustainable mobility, the circular economy, energy storage, energy efficiency and the production of sustainable fuels, among others.
Ecualia is the seventeenth alternative investment vehicle launched by Bankinter Investment in its six-year history. The minimum investment required for institutional and private banking clients is 200,000 euros, in addition to the diversification criteria required so that the investor’s assets are not over-concentrated in a specific sector or type of asset.
Plenium Partners Management
Ecualia is managed by Plenium Partners, which with this vehicle will have more than 2,000 million euros of capital under management, of which 1,250 million euros have been mobilized jointly with Bankinter over the last five years, focused on investment in renewable energies, student residences and sustainable projects and infrastructures. Plenium is therefore in the process of detecting and analyzing investment opportunities that fit its vehicles under management, offering investment structures that are adapted to the needs of each particular case, as has been done in the case of REPETCO.
Key bank in alternative investments
Alternative investment is an area in which Bankinter has established itself as a benchmark player by offering an option for conservative investors that is decoupled from the performance of equities and bonds.