Met with St. Cloud officials Monday
Representatives from the Corsair Group addressed St. Cloud City Council members at a Council workshop on Monday. The Corsair Group, which has recycling operations in Europe, is planning to expand operations into the United States and Canada ... and they’re looking at St. Cloud or Kissimmee as possible locations for that first U.S. plant.
CEO Jussi Saloranta described their unique recycling process, known as pyrolysis: Any plastic item except PVC is heated in an oxygen-free reactor; the heated plastic breaks down into flammable gasses and smoke; the smoke goes through a condensation process and becomes oil, while the gasses go through a wet scrubber to prevent air pollution.
“Essentially, what we release into the environment is hot air,” Saloranta said. “I think it’s very important to mention that we comply 100% with the strictest European environmental regulations. When it comes to emissions, when it comes to general operations, Finland is probably the toughest place in the world. We're fully licensed and fully compliant there, which means that we pretty much are able to meet the requirements everywhere else, as well.”
The oil that is produced is then filtered and sold to companies that use it to manufacture fuels like gasoline, diesel and kerosene, and can also be used to produce new plastic products. Currently, Shell is their largest customer, Saloranta said.
The planned facility would create 30-40 full-time jobs and could process 12,000 tons of plastic per year, generating approximately 10 million liters of oil.
Council members discussed the importance of job creation in the City during the remainder of the workshop as they prepared for the upcoming Joint Planning Agreement meeting with Osceola County officials later this month.
“We’ve got to have jobs here,” said Mayor Chris Robertson. “That’s number one. We need areas for jobs. [Traffic congestion is caused] because everybody’s leaving the city every day and coming back. So if we have jobs here, we keep them here.”
