Delaware is Home to New Carpet Recycling Plant

Modular Carpet Recycling (MCR), New Castle, Del., will open a new carpet recycling facility in Delaware, says MCR CEO and founder Ron Simonetti.

MCR manufactures what it calls “high-purity renewed nylon” from post-consumer carpet and other scrap textiles.

Delaware Governor Jack Markell and Alan Levin, secretary of the Delaware Economic Development Office (DEDO), jointly made the announcement with Simonetti at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at MCR’s new corporate headquarters in New Castle in early June.

DEDO has awarded MCR a $600,000 loan from the Delaware Strategic Fund for new manufacturing equipment to be used at the site. The investment will bring about 30 new jobs to Delaware within three years, according to a DEDO news release.

“The emergence of clean technology industries is one of the most dynamic areas of the economy,” says Levin. “The state’s investment in MCR bonds economic and environmental goals by creating valuable manufacturing jobs for Delaware in this industry, while contributing to reducing waste in landfills.”

Simonetti describes MCR as a “waste carpet refinery” that takes scrap carpet and purifies its nylon content beyond 99 percent. Nylon carpets scrap has 40 to 50 percent nylon content by weight to start, mixed with a variety of other plastics, chemicals, dirt and colors, according to Simonetti.

During the last three years, MCR has designed and built a pilot plant that has recycled scrap carpet into a product that is greater than 99 percent pure nylon. The pilot plant received $5 million of capitalization from private equity and debt sources.

The new facility being built in New Castle is the company’s first commercial plant. “Delaware is a great place for us to build our initial facility and headquarters,” Simonetti says. “We found a talented chemical manufacturing workforce here, combined with an excellent stand-alone site in the mid-Atlantic region.”