Hauler Republic Services will not announce its fourth polymer center “in the very near term,” and hopes pressures from imports of both virgin and recycled PET will ease in the next 12 to 18 months, executives said during a quarterly earnings call in the late afternoon of Feb. 17.
“Right now plastics is pretty challenged broadly,” said Jon Vander Ark, Republic CEO. “What has been nice is the spread between the bale we’re taking on the front end and the PET we’re selling on the back end has been really stable, in part because we’re producing a very premium product that’s meeting our customers’ needs on that front. So we’re going to see how that market evolves.”
Republic has been executing its plan of building four Polymer Centers, each co-located with a Blue Polymers joint venture resin production facilities. So far the Las Vegas and Indianapolis Polymer Centers have started up, and the Indianapolis Blue Polymers is operational.
The Blue Polymers facility in Buckeye, Arizona, is expected to start up this year, and the third Polymer Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was announced last fall. The fourth, located in the Southeast, originally was planned to be disclosed in late 2025, but its timeline is now unclear.
Still, a fourth center “is more likely than not over time,” Vander Ark said. He added that Republic is “just testing how the market evolves,” amid pressure from resin imports and weak macroeconomic fundamentals of sectors that are relevant to Republic.
“I think the macroeconomy I’d characterize as stable. Now moving pieces underneath that, manufacturing, construction, have been weaker,” he said. “We’re into three years, approaching four years of negative demand in recycling of waste. So that’s been a challenging volume environment.” Nevertheless, within that context he called the pricing environment “broadly fairly positive.”
“Recycling processing and commodity sales were flat compared to the prior year. Increased volumes in our polymer centers and reopening a recycling center on the West Coast offset the revenue impact of lower recycled commodity prices,” said CFO Brian Delghiaccio.
The company reported an average recycled commodity price of $112/ton, down by $41/ton or 26.8% from Q4 2024. For full-year 2025, the average recycled commodity price was $135/ton for full-year 2025, lower by $29/ton or 17.7% on the year. Current commodity prices are about $115/ton.
