PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2015

PET news 6 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 06/15 www.petpla.net Phoenix Technologies invests USD18 million to expand rPET production Phoenix Technologies International, a global pro- ducer of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), is announcing an USD18 million expansion to enable upstream production integration. The company will be adding a proprietary new wash line, expected to be operational by the end of 2015, so that it can self-manu- facture clean flake. The company uses clean flake as in feed material to create rPET, which is used to produce packaging for applications such as beverages, food, personal care and household cleaners. Up until now, Phoenix has either purchased clean flake directly or sourced baled bottles, which have been reclaimed from curbside collection, and then tolled through a third-party wash operation to create clean flake. The wash line has a projected output of 25,000 tons (50 million pounds) of clean flake per year. The new line will be housed in a leased 6,130 square meter (66,000 square foot) facility located in close prox- imity to Phoenix’ existing manufacturing plant. When the operation is in full production, the new facility is expected to employ approximately 30 associates. This is in addition to the 53 employed at the main plant. www.phoenixtechnologies.net 16th GEPET in France covers low crude prices, PET markets and packaging innovations The sixteenth edition of GEPET (Greater Europe PET Resin Trade, Applications & Recycling) on 10 -12 June, 2015 in Lyon, France, will cover discussions over the impact of low crude prices on the PET market, RPET indus- try vis-à-vis low virgin PET prices and bring a fresh per- spective on cost optimisation, lightweight developments and conversions from HDPE to PET. David Swift, Managing Director, PCI PET Packaging, Resin & Recycling Ltd will open the event and give his views on the burgeoning question ‘Low oil price: Opportu- nity or threat to polyester packaging?’. Packaging majors including Nestle Waters MT and APPE will share key per- spectives on ‘Packaging Sustainability: Why we should look at the entire product life cycle’, ‘Revolutionary ThermaLite PET jars - for hot/cold fill and all methods of pasteurisation’ as well as French converter PDG Plastiques with an insight- ful update on ‘PET packaging for milk and dairy products’. Futher topics covered by executives from Anellotech Inc, Reliance Technology Group, Reliance Industries Ltd and Sorepla will include bio-based paraxylene from non-food biomass, PX competitiveness, competitiveness in the rPET business, among others. In addition, a pre-conference site visit to the state-of- the-art PET recycling plant of APPE in Beaune is scheduled on 10 June. A post-conference workshop on ‘Improving RPET Quality for Food Contact Applications & New Devel- opments in PET (bottles /trays/ sheets) Recycling’ will round off the programme. www.cmtevents.com Flying start: the Evoguard valve series Krones AG’s series of valves, produced by subsidiary Evoguard GmbH and unveiled at the recent BrauBevi- ale in Nuremberg, can be considered as a success. So far, more than 150,000 valves have been produced: disk valves, seat valves, double-seat valves, aseptic seat valves and aseptic double-seat valves. “The Evoguard series of valves has been optimally tailored to the needs of the food and beverage industries, and of the dairy sector too,” explains Martin Zierer, Man- aging Director of Evoguard GmbH. “The most important requirement applying when we were designing the valves was excellent functionality in actual use, incorporating high-performance seal systems that meet all the hygiene- related stipulations involved.” The use of the latest materi- als available for producing the seals has proved to be a good choice for both the disk valves and for the seat and double-seat valves, creating several advantages in pro- cess applications. In addition, the parts can be precisely traced and identified using a matrix code. The Evoguard valves are produced in the Upper Palatinate town of Nittenau, where the 4,000 square meter production and administrative building accommo- dates the R&D, design, sales, manufacturing and assem- bly departments. www.krones.com Polymetrix EcoSphere SSP for new mega scale PET plant Polymetrix AG, the former Bühler Thermal Processes AG, has been awarded a contract for the delivery of two mega scale EcoSphere SSP lines for a bottle grade PET production facility in Jiangsu Province, P.R. China. The plant is scheduled to be commissioned in the second quar- ter of 2016. The integration of the Polymetrix EcoSphereTM PET SSP technology and the latest generation of melt phase technology built by Chemtex, is setting new standards for PET manufacturing in terms of size, product quality, con- version costs and capital costs. The CP and SSP sections are directly coupled in order to avoid investment in intermediate storage silos. Special attention has been paid to keep the operational robustness of the new PET production concept at a comparable level to conventional PET manufacturing processes. www.polymetrix.com