PETpla.net Insider 07+08 / 2012

NEWS 9 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 07+08 Amcor opens 650 million bpa production facility Amcor Rigid Plastics officially opened its new on-site bottle manufacturing operation at PepsiCo’s Gatorade production facility in Mountain Top, Pa, in ceremony on June 19, 2012. The new in-line operation is expected to produce approximately 650 million hot-fill PET bottles annually. Among the 50 dignitaries present at the ceremony were state and local officials, as well as Amcor CEO Ken MacKenzie, and Michael Schmitt, President of Amcor Rigid Plastics. Amcor has seven similar hot fill facilities located at beverage filling plants throughout the US. The com- pany received strong backing and financial support from state and local agencies including approximately $100,000 in grants for site development and employee training. www.amcor.com Hall 7A / Booth 527 Establishment of PET Plastics Recy- cling Study Group within the German Federal Association for Secondary Raw Materials and Waste (bvse) Although Germany has the largest volumes of collected PET in Europe, the country’s recyclers do not have suf- ficient access to the material. In the opinion of the German PET recycling companies who have joined forces to create a PET study group within the bvse Association for Plas- tics Recycling, there is no end to this trend in sight. The reason for this development lies in the considerably less satisfactory collection systems in evidence in neighbour- ing European countries, such as, for example, France or Italy. Too few PET bottles are being collected, and there is an absence of locally based PET recycling plants. These then try to safeguard their input by means of PET imports from Germany. The situation is being exacerbated by the fact that, overall, the recycling capacities of the PET process- ing plants in Europe are not being fully utilised. Something else that is also being discussed within the PET study group is a change in the labelling of PET bottles which has led during the past few months to higher propor- tions of adhesives and prob- lems with washing the flakes. The plant operators were in agreement on opening up a dialogue with relevant bottlers and brand owners in order not only to identify the prob- lems but also to get together to devise common solutions. Interestingly, the PET recyclers warned against any thought of crushing PET bottles at the point of return. They point out that doing this would mean that it would no longer be so easy to make a distinction between transparent and coloured material and hence the quality and value of the material would be reduced. The overwhelm- ing majority of plants are also not geared up to accepting and recycling material of this type. www.bvse.de