Recycling in greater demand than ever – quality in plastics
Erema, West Hall 1249, Top process and quality standards guarantee the decisive edge in the recycling of clean production waste, with post-consumer material and in PET processing. The trend towards the sustainable handling of plastics combined with the right technology is responsible for the continuing upswing of recycling in the U.S. plastics industry.
The potential of plastics recycling in the USA has never been as big as it is today. The reason for this is the interplay of several factors: the significant reduction of post-consumer plastics waste imports by China, the growing circular economy movement and the ambitious targets of major brand article manufacturers and other producers to increase the amount of recyclate in their products. “If I had to describe the current situation of the plastics industry in the USA in just one word, ‘dynamic’ would probably be the most appropriate,” says Martin Baumann, Vice President Sales of Erema North America. “Above all, China no longer being an international customer for post-consumer waste plastic is a dramatic development. But since, unlike waste plastic, high-quality recycled pellets can still be exported to China, this represents a potential opportunity for plastics recycling in the USA and Canada. This is why Erema North America has added an Intarema TVEplus with Laserfilter to its Technical Centre for customer trials especially for the recycling of post-consumer materials with a high degree of contamination. This system typically processes film waste with paper labels from commercial waste or washed film from curbside waste to make film-grade pellets.
Trade fair attendees will receive information about the Erema melt filters directly from the Erema business unit Powerfil which will be represented at NPE for the first time. The proven filter systems are available as individual components for extrusion plants from other suppliers. “Plastics recycling is more an opportunity than an alternative with regard to sustainability and against the backdrop of increasing prices for landfilling. The focus of our technical developments lies quite clearly on increasing the quality of recyclates. It is precisely for this reason that we have developed the new ReFresher anti-odour technology which enables us to open up completely new application opportunities for plastics recycling,” says Mike Horrocks, CEO Erema North America.
Additional highlights
More and more producers of plastic products are counting on reducing their manufacturing costs through the recycling of clean production waste, as Martin Baumann explains: “Our sales in the recycling of clean production waste are constantly growing. We put this down largely to the increasing demand for high-quality film products and the associated expansion of production capacities,” says Martin Baumann. An Intarema T 1108 will be in action live at the booth, processing clean LDPE production waste direct and without pre-shredding to make high-quality recyclates.
Additionally, Erema will be providing details on the world’s first rPET Inline Preform system at its booth. Sipa, a leading manufacturer of PET packaging solutions from Italy, joined forces with Erema to develop a flexible, direct processing solution to make food-contact-compliant preforms from rPET flakes – in a continuous process. For PET processors the pioneering system has both economic and ecological benefits: energy savings, lower logistics and process costs and higher profitability. The Inline Preform system is in full line with the global trend of processing post-consumer PET flakes direct to make sheet, strapping or end products.
