A financing package will be used for the construction of a PVC profile manufacturing plant in Menemen, a district of Izmir province. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Clean Technology Fund made an agreement with Ege Profil Ticaret ve Sanayi AŞ, the second largest PVC profile maker in Turkey, to facilitate the move of its production from Çiğli to a more specialised industrial zone in Menemen, aiming to increase operational efficiency.
Ege Profil manufactures plastic goods under two main brand names – Egepen Deceuninck and Winsa. It also operates another plant in Kocaeli, 120 kilometres east of Istanbul. The combined total capacity of both plants is 85,000 tonnes per year. The package consists of a EUR 25 million loan from the EBRD and EUR 1 million in parallel financing from the Clean Technology Fund, EBRD said. The upgrade includes photovoltaic panels, wastewater treatment and a combined cooling, heat and power (trigeneration) plant as well as the infrastructure required to expand Ege Profil’s PVC recycling activities, according to the article. The Spanish government has financed an audit to identify energy and resource efficiency opportunities.
The project aims to bring Ege Profil’s PVC recycling rate to about 15%, compared to the country’s rate of below 10%, EBRD said. The amount is expected to increase by at least 800 tonnes per year. EBRD’s loan is the first investment under its Near-Zero Waste programme launched in July, set to drive a profound transformation of waste management in the country.
“Once these efficiency measures are put in place, we estimate that the company will save the equivalent of the cost of about 1.7 million litres of gasoline each year – enough for a car to travel for over 20 million kilometres,” said Frederic Lucenet, EBRD’s director for manufacturing and services.
EBRD’s lending and investments in Turkey are expected to reach a record EUR 1.75 billion for the year, in comparison to EUR 1.4 billion in 2014, the country director Jean-Patrick Marquet said in August.
