Plastic bottle recycler Commercial Plastics Company (CPC) will receive a USD 12.6 million investment from private equity firm Delta Capital Myanmar and Daiwa PI Parters. According to a joint announcement, the deal will be the maiden investment of Daiwa PI’s new Daiwa Myanmar Growth Fund, with committed capital of USD 30 million.

The announcement claims that the new round of investment will make Commercial Plastics the leader in Myanmar’s recycling industry, especially for Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET). Myanmar consumes around 2 billion PET bottles, the announcement said, 64% of which are recycled — more than twice the Southeast Asian average of 26%. The companies also claim Commercial Plastics will be the first in Myanmar to manufacture bottles that meet both US and EU health and safety standards.

Recycling is indeed a large and highly profitable industry. A 2016 report by Frontier found that as much as 50% of solid waste in the city of Yangon is recycled, thanks to a cottage industry of private collectors that buy bottles door-to-door, or glean them from rubbish dumps. These are sold to large processing centers and are usually either broken down for export to China or cleaned and re-sold to beverage companies. Recently, the rise of foreign beverage companies operating within Myanmar itself has created new demand for packaging that meets the standards of their home countries.