PET Recycling : Private Equity Firm Forms New PET Recycling Platform Company

The Sterling Group, an operationally focused middle market private equity firm, today announced the formation of a new PET recycling platform company, Evergreen. Sterling executed the carve-out of Evergreen, the recycling division of current portfolio company, Greenbridge Packaging, and merged it with the Riverside, California assets of CarbonLITE, acquired through a 363 bankruptcy process.

The combined business positions Evergreen as one of the nation’s largest PET recyclers, collecting and processing over one billion post-consumer PET bottles annually at facilities in Clyde, Ohio and Riverside, California. Evergreen’s operations clean, sort, wash and grind post-consumer plastic bottles into recycled PET (“rPET”) flakes and pellets that are then extruded for use by bottle manufacturers and other customers. With increased legislation requiring recycled content in packaging and growing public commitment to the use of post-consumer content in plastic packaging, Evergreen is well positioned to help customers increase recycled content in their products. Evergreen is expected to double its manufacturing capacity of food grade rPET at its Clyde facility over the next year, with a major expansion project underway to add capacity and enhanced recycling capabilities.

“The combination of these two businesses creates a growing national supplier that is well equipped to help its major consumer packaged goods customers increase recycled content in their packaging and thus lessen their impact on the environment,” said Scott MacLaren, Partner at The Sterling Group. “We look forward to Partnering with management to bring our collective decades of experience operating recycling facilities to the continued expansion of Evergreen.”

“We are focused on elevating our commitment to rPET bottle-to-bottle recycling,” said Omar Abuaita, CEO of Evergreen. “This is an exciting time; Riverside’s recycling and food grade rPET manufacturing capabilities are well aligned with the great team and operations we have in place at Evergreen and our plans to bring more high quality, food grade rPET to our customers.”

Sterling’s portfolio companies collectively recycle over 1 billion PET bottles and over 200 million HDPE milk jugs annually.

Evergreen is among the nation’s largest plastic (PET) recyclers, collecting and processing more than one billion post-consumer PET bottles annually with the capability to convert those bottles to food grade rPET for reuse – in important step in today’s circular economy. Evergreen is transforming plastic recycling and reaching increasingly higher levels of efficiency using advanced robotics and state-of-the-art manufacturing lines. Evergreen is a supplier of food grade rPET pellets and flake to many top global brands, helping customers increase recycled content in their plastic packaging, achieve their sustainability goals, and more fully participate in Environmental, Social and Governance programs.

Founded in 1982, The Sterling Group is a private equity and private credit investment firm that targets investments in basic manufacturing, distribution, and industrial services companies. Typical enterprise values of these companies at initial formation range from $100 million to $750 million. Sterling has sponsored the buyout of 59 platform companies and numerous add-on acquisitions for a total transaction value of over $14.0 billion. Sterling currently has over $4.0 billion of assets under management.