Indonesian recycler is tackling the country’s garbage problem

When we think of mountains, images of green meadows, rocky slopes and snow-capped peaks usually come to mind. The mountains of garbage piling up in Indonesia’s landfills, on the other hand, are less picturesque. The island nation has a serious garbage problem. According to the country’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Indonesia is the second-largest contributor to marine plastic pollution worldwide. And PET bottles are a part of the problem. In an effort to change that, a new recycling company – Amandina Bumi Nusantara – was established in 2022. Amandina is a joint venture of beverage giant Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Indonesia and the plastic-packaging expert Dynapack Asia. 

Transforming waste into a valuable resource 

In Indonesia, there is, at present, little official infrastructure for waste management and recovery – and so, it’s all the more crucial that the private sector takes the action. “The decision to establish a recycling company here was based on our shareholders’ desire to promote a circular economy for PET bottles and to transform waste into a valuable resource,” explains Suharji Gasali, managing director at Amandina. “And because we are starting out fresh, with no experience in plastics recycling, we felt it was important to have a competent, reliable partner at our side. Our shareholders have known and appreciated Krones for quite some time already. We knew that the Krones team would be every bit as invested in this project as we are and they wouldn’t let us down, even when difficulties arise.”  

And so, Krones received the order for a turnkey recycling plant – from sorting to grinding and washing right through to packaging the clean flakes for further use. It was under the challenging circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2021, that the cornerstone was laid for Amandina on the outskirts of the bustling metropolis of Jakarta. We might add that the plant was installed in record time.  

We knew that Krones would be every bit as invested in this project as we are. That they wouldn’t let us down, even when difficulties arise. Suharji GasaliManaging Director at Amandina

Besides the recycling expertise that was combined into the subsidiary Krones Recycling in 2024, Krones also brought its strong project management and factory planning expertise to the project. The customer appreciated Krones’ ability to deliver everything from a single source: “We were confident that Krones had both the skills and the network to coordinate the various equipment manufacturers and to bring it all together into a harmonious, integrated whole. In the end, we completed the project in just 14 months’ time – an impressive accomplishment on the part of the entire team,” says Gasali in praise of the project’s execution.  

The plant has been in operation for over two years now and employs more than 150 people. Gasali is proud of his team, who is responsible for one of the biggest and most advanced PET recycling plants in all of Indonesia: “At around 100 to 110 tons of recycled PET per day, we’re actually exceeding the production levels we had expected.” But in order to get to this point, Amandina had to solve a major challenge: how to procure the input materials for the new recycling plant.  

Recycling heroes 

How can a bottle discarded in Indonesia become a new bottle? It’s not an easy question to answer. The lack of the infrastructure for bottle collection, as mentioned earlier in this article, presented Amandina with a considerable problem right from the outset: how to obtain the input material needed each day – in the required quality and quantities – in a country with no centralised waste management.  

That is why the stakeholders decided to take things into their own hands, establishing the Mahija Parahita Nusantara Foundation at the same time that they built the new recycling plant. The foundation created a collection infrastructure that also supports local communities. Waste pickers – whom the company affectionately calls “recycling heroes” – manually collect PET bottles from landfill sites.  

In return, they are rewarded not only with fair pay but also with perks such as free education for their children. The bottles are taken to collection centers, where they are compressed into bales and then delivered to Amandina. What started as a small operation has grown to 10,500 tons per month. Additionally, Amandina also buys input materials from other collection centers. 

Transforming discarded bottles into clean rPET flakes  

The onward journey of a PET bottle can be observed by looking through the large picture window of Amandina’s state-of-the-art visitor center, which offers a view of the recycling plant from Krones. The bales of compressed PET bottles are broken open and their contents sorted by front-end machinery that employs both optical and mechanical means, including screens. Some of the material is additionally sorted by hand. The aim is to ensure that anything that is not PET is removed from the material stream – that is, everything from other plastic types to foreign materials such as metals.  

Once the input material has been broken down into flakes in a wet-grinding process, it moves on to the MetaPure W washing module from Krones. The density separator – also known as the sink-float tank – uses water to separate the plastic flakes into two fractions: Lighter materials, like the polyolefin used in bottle caps and labels, float on the surface and are discharged from the system as byproducts. The PET flakes, whose density is around 1.38 g/cm³ or approximately one and a half times that of the polyolefin flakes, sink to the bottom. They pass through several washing cycles, which effectively remove all contaminants. The clean flakes are then dried and once again sorted, this time by size, color and polymer.  

“At the end of the process, the PET flakes are completely clean,” explains Lani Regina, Quality and Logistics Manager at Amandina. “We can then pack them into big bags and sell them as a high-quality product to processors in Indonesia and internationally or process them further into food-grade pellets in our own downstream operations.” 

Another important factor in the company’s decision-making on this recycling line was the quality of the end product, as Lani Regina reports: “What matters most to our customers at the end of the day is the quality of the rPET flakes. That’s why our team runs a quality-control check every 15 minutes, to ensure the current batch is up to our standards. We’re very proud of the quality of our flakes, which we attribute to the washing module especially, because we can control the washing process very precisely and optimise the dosage of cleaning chemicals to the respective input material.” 

The main force behind the outstanding quality of the rPET are the intensive washers within the MetaPure W washing module from Krones. The combined effects of hot water and caustic soda reliably remove adhesives, dirt, oils and greases, proteins and other contaminants from the flakes.  

The washers’ low speeds make for a gentle process that reduces the generation of fine particles. At the same time, the intensive washer is well-insulated, which makes for optimal use of heat in the washing process. Minimizing radiation losses in this way offers twofold advantages, ensuring maximum efficiency of both the cleaning and the unit’s energy use.  

The future is digital – and sustainable 

Besides efficiency and quality, Amandina also prioritises sustainable management of resources. “We’re currently focusing heavily on reducing our energy and water consumption – and we are already quite pleased with our plant,” says Suharji Gasali on the topic of sustainability within the company.  

In addition, the company is saving on water as well: The only place where fresh water is used is at the very end of the washing process, in the post-washer. This water is then reused in each of the process steps, moving backward through the line by way of a water cascade system – from the post-washer to the density separator all the way through to the pre-washer and grinder, where the flakes are the most heavily contaminated. “The water cascade from Krones is a fantastic system that helps us significantly reduce water consumption in our line,” says Gasali. “Looking to the future, we’re working with Krones now to develop a system in which we can keep the water in a completely closed loop.”  

As if that weren’t enough, the company also intends to use digital solutions to further increase the level of automation. Suharji Gasali sees great potential for further growth: “We’ve got two hectares of land and are generating 36,000 tons of rPET yearly. But we’ve got enough room to double that output – and we’re planning to add a second line for just that purpose. At the same time, we want to further increase our efficiency and generally find ways to continuously improve our operations. And we’d be very happy to work with the Krones Recycling team on that as well. Because if we’ve learned one thing about the team during this project, it’s that they solve every problem that’s presented to them and that no challenge is too great for them – they simply work through it until the project is complete.”  

We want to further increase our efficiency and generally find ways to continuously improve our operations. And we’d be very happy to work with the Krones Recycling team on that as well. Suharji GasaliManaging Director at Amandina

With these plans in mind, Amandina intends not only to become the leading PET recycling enterprise in Indonesia over the next ten years but also to play a key role in promoting a circular economy in the country. To that, Gasali has this to say in closing: “In the end, every bottle recycled helps to preserve the beauty of our natural environment.”