More of Victoria’s hard-to-recycle plastics, including soft plastics, will be diverted from landfill and transformed into new products, following a $4 million investment by the Albanese and Allan Labor Governments, and industry.
Four new projects will build the capacity, capability and resilience of Victoria’s resource recovery sector by increasing plastics recycling by 16,700 tonnes annually. These projects will boost jobs in the Victorian circular economy.
The four projects receiving funding are:
• Pact Recycling (Cheltenham) – The bagMUSTER project will recover and recycle bags used to transport seed, fertiliser, pesticides and stockfeed.
• APR (Dandenong) – The soft plastic sorting capacity upgrade will use an infra-red process from Norway to improve sorting and recycling capability including for end-of-life soft plastics.
• Australian Soft Plastics Recycling (Pakenham) – The upgrade to facilities will improve the recycling of low-density polyethylene films, such as pallet wrap collected from supermarket warehouses, by increasing processing capacity and improving the quality of the recycled material.
• RE4ORM (Barnawartha) – The facility upgrade will recover low-density plastics for reuse in manufacturing new recycled products.
The $3.5 million government investment includes $1.75 million each from the Victorian Government and Australian Government through the Recycling Modernisation Fund (RMF).
The RMF is supporting states and territories in a one-off boost to Australia’s capacity to sort, process and remanufacture waste glass, plastic, tyres, paper and cardboard.
The Australian Government is investing over $200 million in new and upgraded recycling infrastructure through the RMF, contributing towards $1 billion of investment with states, territories and industry.
Including these four projects, the RMF is supporting 27 projects in Victoria with $79 million in joint funding, including $44.7 million from the Australian Government and $34.3 million from the Victorian Government.
The projects are expected to add 328,000 tonnes of recycling capacity each year and see $226.5 million invested in recycling infrastructure in the state.
From today Round 6 of the Recycling Modernisation Fund will make a further $4 million in joint funding available to businesses, social enterprises, not-for-profit organisations and local government organisations to further build the capacity and divert waste from landfill into the circular economy.
Applications close 1 July 2026 or once funding is fully allocated.
The Australian Government is increasing recycling capacity in Australia by more than 1.4 million tonnes every year while creating over 3300 ongoing and construction jobs, including more than 500 in Victoria.