Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Muscat: Oman is set to build the first glass recycling plant in the Middle East in Phase 7 of the Sohar Industrial Estate.
The glass-recycling project, named the National Glass Recycling Co (NGRC) SAOC, will have a 650t/day-capacity fully automated plant. The plant is particularly designed to meet the needs of varied glass manufacturers within the GCC region (container, float, sheet, perfume glass and many more) in terms of specifications, volumes and pricing. The factory has investors from the Omani government and private sectors. Glass Scan Technologies, Dubai, is the exclusive technology provider for this project.
This project is supported by Sheikh Hilal Humad Al Hasani, CEO - PEIE and Chairman - Shumookh Investments, and comes under the patronage of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Sultanate of Oman.
National Glass Recycling Co. SAOC is headed by Ramesh Mani, Managing Partner at Glass Scan Technologies, Chief Promoter and Managing Partner of Glass Recycling Technologies in the Middle East, within the GCC and Glass Industry Leader in the capacity of “Chief Executive Officer & Managing Investor Partner”.
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Mani said, “Currently, we have more than 90,000 tonnes of glass thrown into the landfills in Oman per annum and an average of some 4,000 tonnes per day being dumped into the landfills between Oman, UAE and Qatar itself. The demand for glass within the GCC has been perceived to have a consistent growth at five per cent each year since the last few years. There is no efficient and organised glass recycling system within the GCC in operation and Oman is going to be the first state-of-the-art unit, which is going to cater to the varied range of glass manufacturers within the GCC and Asia.”
Within the GCC, close to 40,000 tonnes per day are thrown into the landfill. The PEIE, which comes under the patronage of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Oman, hopes to resolve this problem by facilitating this project as the first step. With this project, the annual savings in terms of costs incurred towards raw materials, natural gas and enhancement of furnace life by using ready-to-use processed glass cullet from NGRC will benefit Omani glass manufacturers quite a bit and is estimated to reduce their batch costs by some 30 per cent and above under optimum production conditions.
The NGRC plant is expected to be in operation by the end of 2019. Mani also specified that this project is just the first step and the investors along with the Glass Scan Technologies will be looking at multiple recycling projects such as PET, plastic, paper, rubber, metal etc. in the near future.
During the address, Sheikh Hilal and Mani welcomed the new potential investors to the second phase of the project.
Mani said: “The credit for this project should rightfully go to Sheikh Hilal Humad Al Hasani, who has backed my project plans with his support, encouragement, and most importantly, infrastructure. Without him, this project would not have been possible.”
The exclusive technology providers for this project, M/s. Glass Scan Technologies, were founded in 2013.
Two senior executives who are involved in the project include Dieter Olschewski, the CEO of Glass Scan Technologies and German company Cibite, and André Ommer, the Vice President of Glass Scan Technologies and managing owner of the glass global Group.
The technology of the plant is German and it has been successfully tried and tested worldwide.
Mani’s presentation highlighted the importance of recycled glass being free from contamination and the importance of automated technology towards achieving this consistently, as the margin of error in glass industries is nil.
NGRC has already secured long-term import agreements for broken glass i.e. raw materials and export sales agreements with glass manufacturers. This has ensured the pre-booking of the capacities well in advance.
