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★Mark us as a preferred sourceOn 13 October 2026, the newest ALTEO DRS plant was officially inaugurated at ALTEO Circular Kft.’s site in Kistarcsa, near Budapest. The fully automated facility, which entered trial operation in the summer, can sort, pre-treat and bale 14,000 tonnes of returned PET bottles and metal beverage cans per year. Together with the Kőbánya plant opened last year, ALTEO Group’s annual processing capacity for deposit-return packaging has now reached 28,000 tonnes. But how big is that compared with Hungary’s deposit return system as a whole, and how did the company get here? We took a closer look.
In short: The Kistarcsa unit of the ALTEO DRS plant network adds 14,000 tonnes a year, doubling the group’s capacity for returned beverage packaging to 28,000 tonnes. By our own estimate, this is enough to process roughly 40–50 percent of the PET bottles and metal cans collected annually through Hungary’s deposit return system, making it a capacity of national significance.
What happened in Kistarcsa?
According to ALTEO’s press release, the Kistarcsa facility was built by FE-GROUP INVEST Zrt., part of ALTEO’s circular economy business unit, at the ALTEO Circular Kft. site. The plant separates the mixed material stream arriving from Hungary’s mandatory deposit return system (DRS): it splits PET bottles from metal beverage cans and presses them into bales, so they can go on to recyclers as raw material.
The new plant builds on the technological, operational and material-flow experience gained at the Kőbánya facility. Management stressed quality as much as volume: Anita Simon, ALTEO’s Deputy CEO for Sustainability and Circular Economy and Managing Director of ALTEO Circular Kft., said one of the investment’s key results is the ability to produce clean, well-separated material streams even at high volumes. CEO Attila Chikán Jr. noted that the company has deliberately built up its circular economy business, and that Kistarcsa is another step forward in that strategy.
From Kőbánya to Kistarcsa: how the ALTEO DRS plant network was built
The Kistarcsa inauguration is the latest stage of a multi-year expansion that dontwasteit.hu has been following:
- Summer 2022: ALTEO, originally an energy company, announced the acquisition of waste management firm FE-Group – one of the starting points of its move into the waste sector.
- Late 2024: the group bought another waste management company, ÉLTEX Kft., which later continued as ALTEO Circular Kft. – this is how the Kistarcsa site joined the group.
- January 2025: ALTEO openly set the goal of becoming the market leader in Hungary’s inorganic waste management by 2030.
- June 2025: the first sorting plant dedicated to deposit-return material streams opened in Kőbánya, Budapest. The HUF 1 billion investment was supported by a HUF 300 million non-refundable grant, and at full capacity it can produce 11,400 tonnes of PET bales and 3,050 tonnes of aluminium bales per year.
- September 2025: the company announced two more automated lines, in Kistarcsa and Hajdúhadház, promising handover in the first quarter of 2026.
- July 2026: the Kistarcsa plant received its operating permit, and trial operation began.
- 13 October 2026: official inauguration.
The growing weight of waste management is also visible in the company’s financials: we previously reported that growth in waste management contributed to Alteo’s revenue increase.
The best starting point is the national data. According to MOHU, Hungary’s DRS operator, more than 3 billion beverage containers were returned in 2025: over 1.5 billion plastic bottles, 1.3 billion metal cans and more than 200 million glass bottles. The return rate reached 88.8 percent by the end of 2025, putting Hungary within touching distance of the EU’s 90 percent target roughly two years ahead of the deadline. Since the system went live in 2024, the total number of returned containers had passed 5 billion by spring 2026, with daily volumes typically around 8–10 million items.
Processing capacity, however, is measured in tonnes, not pieces. There is no official public conversion, so we made our own estimate using average packaging weights:
- PET bottles: 1.5 billion × 25–30 grams ≈ 37,000–45,000 tonnes/year
- Metal beverage cans: 1.3 billion × 13–15 grams ≈ 17,000–20,000 tonnes/year
- Total: roughly 55,000–65,000 tonnes of PET and metal packaging per year
Glass bottles are excluded, as ALTEO’s plants process only PET bottles and metal cans.
Against this, ALTEO’s 28,000-tonne annual capacity can cover roughly 40–50 percent of the PET and metal packaging coming out of Hungary’s DRS. Put another way: working back from the Kőbánya plant’s planned output, a single line of this type processes on the order of 600 million bottles and cans a year, so the two together handle well over 1.2 billion. That averages 75–80 tonnes of material a day – about four truckloads of bales, every single day.
It is important to stress that this is capacity, not actual throughput. How much material the two plants actually receive depends on service contracts with MOHU and on how quickly full capacity is reached. Still, the estimate shows clearly that this is not a minor add-on facility but one of the backbones of Hungary’s deposit return system.
Why collection alone is not enough
For consumers, the job ends at the reverse vending machine; for the circular economy, it only begins there. Collected packaging becomes a genuine secondary raw material only if PET and metal reach recyclers clean and well separated. The cleaner the PET bale, the better the chance it can be turned back into a food-grade bottle – true bottle-to-bottle recycling. With cans, the stakes are especially high: remelting aluminium takes only a fraction of the energy needed for primary production.
ALTEO’s press release also highlights the economic angle: clean, separated material streams can reduce the use of primary raw materials and import dependency. Simply put, the more returned bottles become raw material at home, the less new plastic and aluminium needs to be sourced from abroad.
Plans versus reality: 28,000 instead of 42,000 tonnes
It is worth looking back at earlier plans. A year ago, ALTEO announced that three plants of 14,000 tonnes each – Kőbánya, Kistarcsa and Hajdúhadház – would triple its DRS processing capacity to 42,000 tonnes, with the two new units starting in the first quarter of 2026.
Today’s picture is more modest: the Kistarcsa plant started in the summer, capacity has doubled to 28,000 tonnes, and the latest press release does not mention the Hajdúhadház line at all.
According to unofficial industry information, the Hajdúhadház facility will not go ahead, but the third, eastern Hungarian capacity may instead be built in Tiszaújváros. The company has not confirmed this, so we treat it as an outlook rather than an announced fact. A change of location would not be surprising: ALTEO already has a significant industrial presence in Tiszaújváros, including the energy services it provides to MOL Petrolkémia, and MOHU, the operator of Hungary’s deposit return system, also belongs to the MOL Group. The area could also serve returned packaging from northern and eastern Hungary well – the same region the Hajdúhadház plant was originally meant to cover.
If a third 14,000-tonne unit is completed – at whichever site – the group’s capacity would reach the originally planned 42,000 tonnes, which by our estimate could cover two-thirds or more of Hungary’s PET and metal deposit-return stream.
A small but professionally interesting discrepancy: the Kőbánya plant was originally presented with an annual capacity of 15,000 tonnes, while the latest release counts it at 14,000 tonnes. The difference most likely reflects different ways of communicating gross input versus net capacity, and does not change the overall picture.
What does this mean for consumers?
At the store, all this simply means that a returned bottle does not vanish into thin air. To help the sorting lines work well, a little care at the start of the chain matters: return bottles and cans intact and uncrushed, with a readable barcode and DRS label, and without other waste mixed in. Meanwhile MOHU keeps developing collection, including bulk-feed machines that accept many containers at once, so the material flow reaching sorting plants is expected to keep growing.
What comes next?
With the Kistarcsa inauguration, ALTEO has become one of the largest processors in Hungary’s deposit return system and has taken a significant step towards its 2030 market leadership goal. The questions for the coming months are how quickly the new plant reaches full capacity, how clean its bales turn out to be, and when and in what form the third line originally planned for Hajdúhadház – expected by industry sources to move to Tiszaújváros – will be built. dontwasteit.hu will keep following developments – you can find our earlier coverage under the ALTEO tag.
ALTEO DRS plant – frequently asked questions
What is the capacity of the ALTEO DRS plant network?
The ALTEO DRS plant network has an annual capacity of 28,000 tonnes. Of this, 14,000 tonnes comes from the Kistarcsa plant, which started in summer 2026 and was officially inaugurated in October, and 14,000 tonnes from the Kőbánya facility opened in June 2025. The Kistarcsa unit doubled ALTEO Group’s processing capacity for returned beverage packaging.
What kind of waste does the Kistarcsa plant process?
The Kistarcsa plant processes PET bottles and metal beverage cans from Hungary’s mandatory deposit return system. Its fully automated technology sorts the mixed material stream, pre-treats it and presses it into bales. The bales are then sent to recycling plants as secondary raw material. ALTEO’s DRS processing plants do not handle glass bottles.
What share of Hungary’s returned packaging does 28,000 tonnes cover?
By our estimate, 28,000 tonnes covers roughly 40–50 percent of the PET and metal packaging from Hungary’s DRS. In 2025, 1.5 billion plastic bottles and 1.3 billion metal cans were returned, which equals about 55,000–65,000 tonnes a year using average packaging weights. This is capacity, not the volume actually processed.
Why is capacity 28,000 rather than 42,000 tonnes?
Because only two plants, Kőbánya and Kistarcsa, have been completed so far, each with 14,000 tonnes of capacity. In September 2025, ALTEO planned three plants, including one in Hajdúhadház, for a total of 42,000 tonnes. The latest press release does not mention the Hajdúhadház line; according to unofficial industry information, the third capacity may instead be built in Tiszaújváros.
How can consumers help sorting plants work better?
Mainly by returning bottles and cans intact and uncrushed. A readable barcode and DRS label matter, and no other waste should be mixed in with the returned packaging. The cleaner the incoming material, the higher the quality of the bales a sorting plant can produce, and the better the chance a bottle becomes a bottle again.
Sources:
ALTEO Plc. press release (13 October 2026), MOHU, MTI; tonnage-based shares are dontwasteit.hu’s own estimates based on average packaging weights.
