A Minnesota plastic film processing facility that experienced a high-profile failure early this year will reopen with longtime plastics recycling company GDB International at the reins.
GDB on Sept. 4 announced it will reopen the Rogers, Minnesota, facility that was briefly operated by Myplas USA early this year. Headquartered in New Jersey, GDB has increased its U.S. plastics recycling capabilities in recent years, largely in response to international market shifts.
The facility will be run by a newly formed GDB subsidiary, GDB Circular, which has purchased a majority share in the recycling facility.
In a statement, Raj Bagaria, managing director of GDB Circular, said the company is “thrilled to continue building on the original vision of creating a circular economy for flexibles and rigid polyolefins in the upper Midwest.”
First announced in 2022, the facility involves numerous partners, including major brand owners General Mills and Schwan’s Company, as well as Closed Loop Partners, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste and MBOLD, a Minnesota coalition working to solve challenges in the food and agricultural sectors.
The announcement did not specify when the facility will reopen. Financial details were not released. A spokesperson for the project declined to provide additional comment.
High hopes, swift challenges
When it was announced in 2022, the film recycling project was led by Myplas USA, the U.S. subsidiary of South African-headquartered polyolefins reclaimer Myplas. The project drew significant attention and investment, amassing $24 million in investment funds by mid-2023. That included private funding and state government support from Minnesota agencies.
The concept was for the facility to process 90 million pounds of recovered PE per year, shredding, washing and extruding it into post-consumer LDPE and HDPE resin pellets. The facility planned to produce food-grade and non-food-grade resin.
It opened in December 2023 to much fanfare, including a national CBS News profile. But by February, the plant had shut down. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on the closure that month, indicating operations had seemingly come to a halt. By April, the facility faced a lawsuit from its landlord, seeking three months of unpaid rent. That legal action was settled a few weeks later.
Little was said publicly about what caused the closure. In statements to news outlets, a company representative mentioned the project was looking at “management and operational changes” and referenced unspecified “financial challenges.”
The latest announcement did not address the reasons behind the closure, but it did note the facility has seen some changes during the downtime.
“Significant new investments have been made to upgrade the facility and its operations, incorporating cutting-edge technologies that enhance efficiency and reduce adverse environmental impact,” the announcement stated. “These advancements position the Rogers facility to be a state-of-the-art hub for plastics recycling in the region.”
Many of the initial project partners are still involved and supportive of the new iteration, the announcement added. And the original operator is still involved to some degree: “Myplas SA continues its support of the operations,” the release stated.
