PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2015

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 14 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 11/15 www.petpla.net develop it. If we had fewer production facilities in Europe or offered fewer added values, we would be mere ser- vice providers. And this is what we are trying to prevent.” PET to PET Recycling Öster- reich GmbH - the company Founded in 2006, and represent- ing the entire Austrian drinks sector, the company is backed and financed by Coca Cola HBC Austria GmbH, Radlberger Getränke GmbH & Co OG, Rauch Fruchtsäfte GmbH & Co OG, Spitz GmbH, Vöslauer Mineral- wasser AG.  Intake 2014: 820 million PET bottles  approx. 20,500t  Output predominantly food quality (clear, blue or green) = 80%, i.e.  approx. 17,000t Strasser: “Our core business is bottle-to-bottle. The bulk of the rPET we produce, some 80%, is food grade and is supplied to our stakehold- ers and customers via the recycling operation. The remainder or most of it, amounting to approx. 20% (brown quality) is also recycled into alterna- tive, lower grade products, generally into the textile industry.”  Location Müllendorf, to the south of Vienna,  Area of premises 30,000m 2 , pro- duction bay  3,000m², 50 office and shop floor staff Strasser: “The investments of the past year have gone into extend- ing the warehouses into doubling the size of the premises. We have built a new silo installation. Currently we are engaged in bringing the washing plant up to a technologically optimum level. Our mills are being converted from dry to wet.” Dipl. Ing. Christian Strasser has been Managing Director of PET to PET Recycling since the company was set up. He continues: “I was involved in the Packaging Directive back in 1993 as part of my role in a bever- ages company, where I was Techni- cal Director, providing support for the PET to PET recycling project from its inception, as a member of the Project Team in 2006. Now I find myself in the fortunate position of translating theory into practice.” PETplanet: What motivates you? What is your personal input? Strasser: “I put my heart and soul into the business, into develop- ing the value-added chain, and into PET conditioning, because I believe PET processing to be a necessary and meaningful operation. There are of course other applications equally meaningful, such as thermal utili- sation. But for me personally, PET bottle-to-bottle recycling is by far the most sophisticated and the most inter- esting application. There is another side to this, that we, as management, are fulfilling an important social obli- gation, by instilling in our people an awareness of the importance of what we do, and successfully implementing a strategy collectively agreed by the Management Board.” The recycling plant in Müllendorf / Burgenland Strasser: “The first section of the plant was constructed in 2007 – consisting of bale reception, bale dismantling, sorting cabin, shredding and hot wash out of which we extract a washed flake. This washed flake is already suitable for recycling in a number of applications but not for the foodstuffs sector. For subsequent and more intensive cleaning we installed, way back in 2007, a URRC line –a line developed in America in collaboration with a big beverages manufacturer – a process which suc- cessfully achieves the production of food grade products at low levels of temperature loading. It was at this