a ROW has erupted between two of Britain's top plastic recycling firms over a ?1m public subsidy for a new bottle-handling plant. Green Tech, a recycling firm, has received the funding from the London Waste and Recycling Board to support the construction of a new plant at Enfield, north London, capable of recycling 25,000 tonnes of plastic bottles a year. The plant will compete with a site run by Closed Loop Recycling in Dagenham, some 13 miles to the south, which has revealed plans to double its capacity to 60,000 tonnes. Combined, the two new sites would have enough capacity to process more than double the amount of plastic bottles collected in London each year - or 30% of all the bottles gathered across the UK. Chris Dow at Closed Loop has criticised the decision to hand out the ?1m grant when there is no shortage of bottle recycling capacity. His rivals, however, claim that the new plant could absorb some of the millions of tonnes of plastic that are being exported to China by recycling firms. Dow said: "It's inefficient to build another plant so close to an existing one. If the government is going to financially support plants it should be making sure the correct infrastructure is in place to ensure they have the right material to recycle." Closed Loop and Green Tech are both now fighting to secure finance for their plans at a time when it is hard to get loans and find new investment. Closed Loop has already had to delay plans to build a second plant in Wales because it has been unable to finalise ?30m of funding. Green Tech is hoping to have its plant operating by the end of next year but has yet to secure the final ?4m of the total ?8.5m it needs. It received the ?1m funding package from the recycling board in December. Javed Mawji of Green Tech said that despite all the new capacity, there was more than adequate room for recyclers to develop. He said: "UK Customs estimate that between 50,000 and 80,000 tonnes of recovered plastics are exported to China every month. Not all of that would be suitable for us,