Post-consumer PET bottles are normally recycled for textiles (or garments), carpets, sheets and injection molded goods. The bottle-grade PET is of a higher quality and has better performance characteristics relative to other grades of PET. It is important to recover this value to produce high performance PET products. The value of PET flakes can be further enhanced by Solid State Polymerization (SSP). The SSP process increases the degree of polymerization of the flakes (expressed in Intrinsic Viscosity - IV) while removing several contaminants resulting in enhanced performance characteristics of the recycled PET. The recycled PET flakes, after being processed through the SSP system, can be converted to high quality industrial and construction materials as well as PET bottles that require a higher than normal I.V. A unique continuous process is presented here which is energy efficient and suitable for integration into large scale reclamation facilities.