Plans are being drawn up for a new industry at the former Tubex factory in Portroe, Co Tipperary.
The factory has remained vacant since July 2003, when the collapsible-tube manufacturer closed down with the loss of 52 jobs.
Prior to this, in August 2001, the company announced it was closing its operations in Lisboney industrial estate in the town, a move that sounded the initial death knell of the company.
The company had manufactured plastic and aluminium tubing for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics businesses and was an important local employer for people in both Nenagh and Portroe.
Now a Kerry-based refuse collection firm is hoping to establish a plastics-recovery facility at the site, starting with 15 jobs
Eoghan McEnery, of South West Bins on Wheels Ltd, has applied to the planning department of North Tipperary County Council for permission to establish the facility on a site at Corbally, Portroe.
Mr McEnery has also applied for permission to provide a 402m extension of a site in Corbally.
The company is understood to have purchased the premises and intends sorting and bagging shredded recycling plastic for reuse in the plastics manufacturing industry. It is also seeking to put in place a weighbridge, a truck-turning area and landscaping on the site of the former Tubex factory. It is hoped to demolish two small outbuildings and raise the height of buildings to 10.17m.
The planning application is now on view at the North Tipperary County Council offices on the Limerick Road, Nenagh.