Milk bottle in 100% recycled opaque PET
As part of consortium comprising industrialists and stakeholders in the dairy sector, Société Générale des Techniques (SGT) has perfected a process for incorporating recycled opaque PET into new UHT milk bottles. A French manufacturer of preforms, SGT has joined a working group to develop a 100% recyclable long-life milk bottle.
The research work took 3 years to complete and the results were presented at a press conference in Paris at the beginning of the year. Achieving a ʺfood contact” grade and a satisfactory appearance for the bottle was very challenging in technical terms. Slightly grey and glossy, the new milk bottle is claimed to offer many benefits: less material, longer shelf life for the milk and suppression of the membrane seal.
The members of this consortium, including SGT, have thus demonstrated that preforms (therefore new bottles) can be manufactured by incorporating up to 100% of recycled PET in strict compliance with food standards.
This “bottle-to-bottleʺ closed loop is totally in line with the strategy dictated by European authorities. Indeed, by 2025 PET bottles will have to include 25% of recycled material. This obligation makes the ʺbottle-to-bottleʺ closed circuit an industrial and regulatory priority. With this new project, SGT is actively contributing to this collective challenge, that consists in developing a more virtuous and environmentally-friendly economy by prioritising the recycling of packaging and offering bottles a second life.
