Shelburne Ideal Location for North American First
Blue Mountain Plastics processes 3.5 billion plastic bottles each year
When Ice River Springs of Feversham, Ontario implemented its closed loop recycling system, it completed the loop in Shelburne on Highway 89 in Dufferin County. Ice River Springs is a private label water bottling company that wanted to locate its subsidiary Blue Mountain Plastics on the truck route between the bottling plant in Feversham and the distribution points in Toronto, Ontario.
“We looked at where the freight lanes were, “said Ryan L’Abbe. He is vice president and general manager of Blue Mountain Plastics. “We found a 185,000 square foot building in an industrial park, with the municipal services we needed: water, sewer, power all within less then one and a half kilometers from the main truck route.” Not only does this save time, it reduces the cost and environmental impact of shipping.
When Ice River Springs delivers water to the GTA trucks pick up bales of recycled plastic to deliver to the Shelburne plant. The Blue Mountain facility separates the HDPE lids from the PET bottles, washes and grinds the plastic into flake. In Feversham, the flake is converted into food grade PET pellets and extruded back into water bottles.
Ice River Springs is the first bottled water producer in North America to manufacture its own recycled PET resin and the first in the world to produce a 100 per cent rPET bottle in house. The company has garnered much respect and many awards for this ground breaking work.
The 35 employees of the Blue Mountain Plastics plant include tradesmen from the Shelburne area. With the operation running 24 hours a day, they process more than 3.5 billion plastic bottles each year. This translates into about 50 million pounds of PET flake and an offset of more than 75 million pounds of CO2.
“Right now we’re running flat out, at full capacity, five days a week,” said L’Abbe. “We take all the PET from blue boxes across Ontario, as well as material from New York, Michigan and as far away as Maine.” In addition to its Feversham bottling plant, Ice River Springs has six others, two in Canada (Calgary and Cobourg) and four in the United States.
FOR SPECIFIC INQUIRIES ABOUT BLUE MOUNTAIN PLASTICS, PLEASE CONTACT:
Ryan L’Abbe
519-925-3550 x 21