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EFS-plastics recently completed a US $12 million expansion in Lethbridge, Alberta, shifting the facility from a regional sorting operation into a fully integrated recycling hub that can process HDPE and PP – and for the first time for EFS, PET – on a single wash line.
The company is currently starting up HDPE and PP processing, with PET flake capacity expected online this fall, CEO Martin Vogt told Plastics Recycling Update. EFS anticipates producing food-grade PCR for all three resins starting in 2027, and is conducting challenge testing and preparing regulatory submissions for letters of no objection (LNO) from the US FDA.
Equipment and construction costs ran 15–25% above initial estimates between planning and installation due to inflation, Vogt said. Project support from the government-funded organization Alberta Innovates shows how targeted public investment can unlock private recycling infrastructure, he said.
Vogt began his career in his native Germany in the early 1990s and founded EFS in Listowel, Ontario, in 2007. Since 2015, the company has operated as a joint venture with Inteplast Group, which he says paved the way for the current multi-plant footprint.
In addition to the Ontario and Alberta facilities, EFS operates flexible packaging processing in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. In 2023, they added a third production line to the plant, allowing the plant to purchase much cheaper B- and C-grade bales for upgrading. The same year, EFS debuted R-LDPE resin produced at the plant.
Flexible design for rigid plastics
The Alberta expansion represents the company’s most technically ambitious project to date. At its heart is a highly flexible, batch-style wash line — a unique configuration in the industry. While lines that can handle PE and PP are fairly common, the ability to process PET alongside polyolefins on the same system is rare. Vogt says EFS is among the first to implement a three-material setup at this scale.
The front end runs continuously, sorting material into storage silos. As each silo fills, an operator selects a new program and the wash line automatically purges and restarts on the next material stream. The line can also switch to single-resin processing when market conditions or EPR program design call for greater material segregation.
Rather than relying on outside engineering firms and turnkey processing lines — the industry norm — EFS designed and integrated the system through its own engineering arm, EFS Equipment. The business designs process and control systems, integrates third-party equipment, and provides ongoing maintenance and upgrade support across all EFS plants, Vogt said.
“We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we have the ability to design if we need to, and make changes if we need to.”
Closing the gap between feedstock and resin
The Alberta facility opened in 2021 as a secondary sorting plant, upgrading mixed rigid plastic bales before shipping them to Ontario for further processing. The expansion eliminates that cross-country haul, keeping more value and jobs in western Canada, Vogt said.
It also closes the geographic gap between EFS and its feedstock. “The West Coast does not have the amount of supply that the East Coast has. So you can’t build three production lines,” he said. “We needed to come up with an idea to adjust to the available volumes, and so we built a production line which can handle three different streams.”
The company has long imported post-consumer plastics from Oregon, Washington and California; processing capacity in Alberta now sits close to those sources, shortening supply chains and cutting transportation costs and emissions. That proximity also positions EFS to serve emerging West Coast EPR programs for packaging as they come online.
Vogt pushed back on assumptions about material segregation, stressing that the highest overall system yield often comes from mixed streams processed at specialized facilities — rather than from highly fragmented MRF sorting. The new line’s flexibility, he noted, means EFS can adapt as EPR program designs evolve.
“Because of the market, many markets are shifting towards single types of materials. Of course we can also run just straight single-type material… but the highest yield we will always get from a mixed rigid bale.”
Policy drives investment
The investment comes as the industry faces significant pressure, with recyclers closing globally. And yet the long-term mission to create a circular economy continues to drive many stakeholders.
“Recycling currently is not a business model, it’s a passion,” he said. “And if you’re not passionate about it then you shouldn’t get into it, because you can get easier and more money in many other areas.”
With Canadian provinces and territories having adopted packaging EPR programs, the US now has a growing library of lessons to draw from as state-level policy develops. Vogt said he sees those lessons being applied, particularly by groups paying close attention to what has worked — and what hasn’t — in Canada.
He’d like to see US EPR programs focus on end-to-end efficiency, from curbside collection to finished PCR, rather than optimizing a single link in the chain such as sorting for maximum commodity revenue. Involving recyclers early in program development is a valuable and often underused opportunity, he added. Transparency and balanced governance are also critical, particularly where a small number of producer responsibility organizations (PROs) represent large shares of the market.
“The innovation of the recyclers over the last 20 years brought us to the level where we are. That was only possible because there was actually at some point a business case to be made to be a recycler. Over the last couple of years there is not, and that’s why you see the industry declining.”
