Packaging company Visy has produced the first glass bottles at its new glass recycling and manufacturing facility in Yatala, Queensland, four years after construction began.

Once fully operational, the plant will manufacture up to 1 billion glass bottles and jars annually, incorporating an average of 70 per cent recycled content.

Visy CEO Mark De Wit noted the milestone following the start of commissioning of the site’s first of two oxygen-fuelled furnaces, which are designed to consume less energy than traditional facilities.

Engineers at the south Brisbane site started operations using the first of two oxygen-fuelled furnaces. Visy intends to bring the second furnace online as commissioning advances across the site.

Conventional furnaces burn fuel using ambient air, which introduces unwanted atmospheric nitrogen into the heating chamber. Visy instead feeds concentrated oxygen into the combustion zone to trim nitrogen volumes and raise thermal efficiency.

Incoming cullet undergoes pre-heating before entering the main melt zone. Lifting recycled glass temperatures ahead of melting cuts the thermal lift required from the burners, driving lower fuel use per tonne of finished glass.

Putting glass production directly into Yatala links sorting, melting, forming, and packing inside an existing manufacturing cluster. The new site stands next to Visy’s established cardboard box factory and beverage can plant.

Logistics dictate glass economics. The Yatala ovens sit roughly two kilometres from Asahi Beverages’ Yatala brewery and about 30 minutes by road from Lion’s XXXX brewery in Milton, removing cross-state container freight from local supply chains.

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