Pact Group has appeared before the House Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Resources during a public hearing on Wednesday 7 August 2024 in the Parliament of Victoria.

Pact Chairman Raphael Geminder made the following opening statement.

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Thank you for inviting me to appear before this Committee and for the opportunity to make a short statement.

My name is Raphael Geminder and I’ve been involved in the packaging and recycling industries for more than 30 years.

I am the Chairman of Pact Group, a plastic packaging, reuse and recycling company I founded 22 years ago. I’m also chair of Kin Group, which is a privately owned family office, with interests in food and beverage manufacturing. With me is Andrew Smith who is the Executive Adviser, for the Circular Economy at Pact, and Siobhan McCrory, the Executive General Manager, Sales, Marketing & Innovation at Pact.

In my time in this industry, I think the last five years have been among the most challenging I have seen for a range of reasons.

We have had a global pandemic, wars, severe weather events, shipping and supply chain disruptions, inflationary pressures and difficult economic conditions – all of which have impacted businesses in Australia – including my own.

Despite this disruption, Pact Group has managed to continue to invest in infrastructure and equipment, to build a circular economy for plastic packaging in Australia.

With the support of a significant grant from the Federal Government, Pact is investing more than $75 million in new equipment and facility upgrades, to increase the amount of recycled content that we can include in our packaging products.

In the last three years, Pact with our partners Cleanaway, Coke and Asahi, have received support from the government’s Recycling Modernisation Fund to build three of Australia’s largest plastic recycling facilities. Collectively, these three facilities represent a total investment of more than $250 million and we have the capacity to recycle over 70,000 tonnes of post-consumer plastic … so what does 70,000 tons of post-consumer plastic look like – its equivalent to 10 million bottles a day.

While we all work towards building a strong domestic circular economy, there is only so much that can be done without government regulatory intervention.

We are pleased that Minister Plibersek has announced the government will introduce National Packaging Laws that will mandate minimum recycled content requirements for all packaging.
This is critical if we want to create an effective circular economy, where we turn the packaging consumers discard into new recycled packaging.

I say that because up until this new legislation is in place, Australia relies on voluntary packaging targets and the goodwill of industry to make a difference.

We need the new legislative framework now and I am somewhat disappointed at our pace, albeit I understand we are not the only priority and there is a lot to navigate in this monumental change for good.

If the government and all of us get this right, we have an opportunity to make a truly positive impact on our environment, by reducing the amount of virgin resins we rely on and diverting more packaging waste from landfill, thereby contributing to an overall reduction in carbon emissions.

I’ll leave others to discuss the intricacies of how the new National Packaging Laws could and should be shaped, importantly we are not re-inventing the wheel here, there are many countries that are already years ahead of us.

There is, however, one critical element that government must get right to ensure the continued viability of Australia’s domestic recycling and packaging sectors.

We must ensure, that locally produced recycled material, is not undermined, by cheap products imported by businesses seeking to comply with mandated requirements.

Australia is a net importer of plastic packaging material and that stuff winds up in our kerbside recycling system. So, markets for domestically produced recycled plastic must be prioritised. The high costs of production in Australia can result in locally produced material competing on an uneven playing field with cheap virgin and recycled imports.

To ensure a viable recycling system, get meaningful diversion from landfill, and fast track our progress towards a circular economy, we need mandatory requirements, for the procurement and use of domestic recycled content in all packaging. Demand creation is a critical building block in the circular economy.

In conclusion and pleasingly … Industry with support from government, has already invested heavily in infrastructure, to create a local circular economy for plastics. We need government to ensure that the new regulatory environment, will adequately safeguard and grow our domestic recycling and manufacturing industries, otherwise Australia will fail to achieve its circular economy objectives.

On that note, thank you once again for having us today, I will leave it there and open the floor for questions.

Information about the inquiry is available at: Food and Beverage Manufacturing in Australia – Parliament of Australia