Recycler Operates Within Puerto Vallarta Prison Stephen Downer - Plastics News
go to original August 1, 2012

From left: Tecnopenales cofounder Octavio Victal Jr., his brother and plant manager JP Victal, and father and cofounder Octavio Victal Sr. (Tecnopenales SA de CV photo)

A chance meeting five years ago between grinding entrepreneur Octavio Victal Jr. and a senior prison social rehabilitation official has blossomed into an annual $1 million-plus plastic bottle recycling business that appears to be unique in Latin America.

Tecnopenales SA de CV operates from inside the Centro Integral de Justicia Regional Puerto Vallarta, one of five penitentiaries in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. The prison has 1,000 inmates, 100 of whom are employed by Tecnopenales’ two founding partners, Victal Jr., a university graduate in marketing, and his father Octavio Victal Sr., a heart surgeon.

Since setting up the company in February 2009, the pair have invested $1.1 million in machinery and auxiliary equipment. They buy commingled bales with PET, polypropylene and high density polyethylene bottles and reprocess 280,000 pounds of mixed bales every four weeks.

"Our current capacity is 360,000 pounds of mixed bales per month and we're pushing to reach 400,000 pounds a month by mid August, which is as much as 65 percent of all the plastic recovered from the city (of Puerto Vallarta)," Victal Jr. told Plastics News by email.

About 200,000 pounds of the material is clear PET, which is hot washed, he said. The rest is sold as dirty regrind to Asia.

"We don't have our own AQSIQ license so we sell to major U.S. brokers like Avangard Innovative Ltd of Houston, and Siwin Corporation of Compton City, California." AQSIQ stands for General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and is a Chinese government norm that aims to ensure that imported waste complies with environmental protection standards.

Eighty-five percent of Tecnopenales' production is exported to China or Taiwan. Natural HDPE and PP from the company's floating tanks, used to separate PET from HDPE and PP, are sold locally.

The company generated sales of $1.2 million in 2011. In June it invested $170,000 in new machinery, which the Victals expect will enable Tecnopenales to process 100 percent of the city's recovered plastic bottle waste and drive its annual sales to $1.8 million.

The new machinery, purchased from Repet Inc., of Chino, California, includes two centrifugal washers, a prewashing tromell with hot water, sorting belts and de-labeling machines.

According to Victal Jr., Tecnopenales plans to open similar facilities in at least three more of Jalisco's jails by 2014 in a joint venture with one of the company's current customers.

Other major customers include Grupo Simplex SA de CV, Monterrey, Mexico, and Topwell Group Unit Co Ltd. of Taipei, Taiwan.

Victal Jr. started in the plastics sector seven years ago with his own small grinding operation in Puerto Vallarta, where he employed 20. At a seminar, organized by Mexico's environment and sustainable development ministry (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable) in 2008, he was approached by the then director of INJALRESO (Industria Jalisciense de Rehabilitación Social), which seeks work opportunities for prison inmates.

"He (the social rehabilitation officer) wanted to recycle the plastic produced inside the state penitentiaries," said Victal Jr. "I started to look into their scrap volumes, especially in the Puerto Vallarta prison, and I told the officer the volumes were insufficient to justify a big investment, but we came up with a second plan."

This was to process not only the prison's plastic but as much of Puerto Vallarta's as the Victals could get their hands on. They signed a contract with the state government for 15 years.

Their first investment was in a cold wash line for PET and a couple of grinders. The grinders include a Nelmor and a Chinese brand. A Mexican company called Tecnorec SA de CV supplied the original cold wash line. The line has been modified to incorporate hot wash tanks and equipment, complemented by Kongskilde aspirators and metal detection devices from Bunting Magnetics Co.

Tecnopenales was fully operational by June 2009, by which time it had 40 inmates working in the plant. In an attempt to increase quality and capacity, Victal Jr. contacted Steve Alexander, of the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers.

Alexander "introduced me to many people who have directly or indirectly helped in the growth of the company," he said.

The inmates employed by Tecnopenales have been found guilty of a variety of crimes, ranging from larceny to drug dealing and homicide, according to Victal Jr.

The penitentiary's psychology department and a security council selects them for the work and they earn the national minimum wage of 54 pesos ($4 dollars) a day. Ten percent of their wage is deducted and deposited in a pension plan for when they are released.

To be accepted, they have to prove they are nonviolent. Working efficiently can lead to the time they spend behind bars being reduced.

Asked how competent the prisoners he employs are, Victal Jr. replied: "They are highly enthusiastic for there's no other work option inside. Most of them are competent and some are highly skilled, thanks to the work they did before entering prison." The employees include qualified mechanics, electricians, metal workshop workers and welders, he said.