With SGR, SGT materialises its commitments to sustainable development
Last November, Société Générale des Techniques (SGT) inaugurated its new site at Chalon-Sur-Saône in the east of France, which includes a preforms manufacturing plant (the Group’s 5th) and a plastics recycling unit: the SGR. The recycled PET produced by this new unit has been baptised CIRPET.
The SGR unit has been up and running since the beginning of the year. It currently employs twenty or so workers and should eventually produce 12,000t/a of recycled PET.
“At present, the supply of recycled food-grade plastic does not meet the demand”, explains Frédéric Mignot, Chairman of the SGT/SGR Group. “To ensure we can supply the requisite volumes and quality rPET, we have decided to produce it ourselves”.
This new unit, conceived through a circular economy approach, features a unique regeneration line unprecedented in Europe that can produce food grade recycled PET (rPET).
The facility features an extruding machine with underwater cutting and an ultra-efficient decontamination system that produces rPET whose visible qualities (transparency and colour), mechanical qualities (viscosity) and organoleptic qualities match those of virgin PET. Furthermore, the SGR uses a solid state polycondensation (SSP) system that offers the benefit of high industrial security, as all the stages of the thermal process take place in a neutral atmosphere. The whole process requires little consumption of energy.
To introduce the concept of Circular PET, the CIRPET is currently pending approval by EFSA (European Food Safety Authority). Through its Chairman, the SGT group reasserts its commitment to sustainable development: “We are mindful of the economic and ecological stakes currently at play, and we have decided to contribute actively to the development of an efficient circular economy in the packaging sector by offering more recycled plastic.”
The aim is clear: accelerate the incorporation of recycled plastic into the production of new preforms in accordance with new European regulations. Indeed, by 2025 PET bottles will have to include 25% of recycled material. This obligation makes the “bottle-to-bottle” closed circuit an industrial and regulatory priority.
Today the SGT is fully in line with what is at stake in its new 4-year action plan, which embraces the circular model and is based on the 3Rs policy: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. While the newly created SGR illustrates the “R” of Recycling, the group also intends to meet the goals of Reduction and Re-use. “We have always strived to make plastic bottles lighter and have made steady technical progress in this field, to satisfy our customers in search of reductions in the quantities of raw materials”, explains Frédéric Mignot.
With this in mind, the group’s R&D department has developed new ranges of “ecologically-designed” preforms that precisely address the current challenges posed by sustainable development, with necks measuring 26/22, 25/22, 33mm and the “snap-cap” bottle finish. With regard to re-use, the SGT anticipates new opportunities and business partnerships, more particularly on the “large volumes” range, and has expanded its offer with a new 63/54 neck for 20-litre containers.
