The plant, located in Piracicaba, near San Paulo, uses plasma technology to separate the aluminum and plastic used in some types of packaging.
Other competing carton recycling plants can separate the paper, but not the plastic and aluminum components used in such packaging, said Franklin Feder, the president of Alcoa's Latin American division.
"The emission of pollutants during the recovery of the materials is minimal, handled in the absence of oxygen, without combustion, yielding an energy efficiency rate close to 90 per cent," he said.
The new plasma process allows the paper, plastic and aluminium components to be reused as raw material, he said.
Alcoa's Brazilian affiliate, Alcoa Aluminio, built the plant as a joint project with Tetra Pak, Klabin and TSL Ambiental. The new plant can process up to 8,000 tons per year of plastic and aluminum, representing the recycling of about 32,000 tons of aseptic packaging, Feder said.
The recycling plant uses electricity to produce a jet of plasma at 15,000 Celsius to heat the plastic and aluminium mixture. The plastic is recovered as paraffin and the aluminium is processed into high-purity ingots.
Alcoa supplies thin-gauge aluminium foil to Tetra Pak for aseptic packaging. The company plans to use the recycled aluminium to manufacture new foil.
The recovered paraffin will be sold to companies in the Brazilian petrochemical industry, many of which are based in the San Paulo industrial area. Thepaper, extracted during the first phase of the recycling process, will be transformed into cardboard by Klabin. TSL Ambiental, which developed the thermal plasma technology used in the plant, will manage the new facility.
Alcoa is a leading producer of primary aluminium, fabricated aluminium, and alumina for the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation and industrial markets.
Tetra Pak is a manufacturer of food processing equipment and packaging materials worldwide. Klabin is Brazil's largest paper manufacturer and a major exporter of cardboards for packaging. TSL Ambiental is an engineering company based in San Paulo.