PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2016

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 32 PET planet insider Vol. 17 No. 06/16 www.petpla.net Installation of a complete Krones recycling system at Mpact Recycling South Africa recycles Based on an article by Peter Hartel, Krones AG RECYCLING S P E C I A L Mpact, one of South Africa’s leading paper and packag- ing producers, and its new division Mpact Polymers started operations in late 2015 with its MetaPure bottle-to-bottle PET recycling system. The plant was designed with a capacity to process almost a quarter of the PET bottles produced by the South African beverage industry into bottle-grade PET. Mpact uses the pellets itself for making its own preforms or sells them to converters or directly to the beverage industry. In Wadeville, about 60km east of Johannesburg, Mpact has inaugurated a new line of business. The MetaPure PET recycling system is the logical continuation of the recycling opera- tions run by this listed South African company. According to Petco, the national Extended Producer Responsibility Organisation for the PET sector, the demand for PET in South Africa is growing by approximately 8% annu- ally. In 2015, the total South African market for PET (virgin and recycled) was approximately 210,000t, close to 70% of which was processed into PET bottles, primarily for use in the beverage industry. More than 74,000t of PET bottles were collected for recy- cling in 2015, the majority of which were processed into polyester staple fibre, or recycled into bottle- and food- grade recycled PET resin, thereby fully closing the loop in bottle-grade recycling. With the new Krones recy- cling system, Mpact can now pro- cess 29,000t of used PET bottles into 21,000t of rPET raw material. The choice of location was logical: Gauteng Province, in which the new system is operating, consumes a large majority of PET containers in South Africa. The recycling of PET bottles is, of course, primarily a high-volume business, which is why the collec- tion points are mostly concentrated in towns and large cities. Nonetheless, Mpact is aiming to increase the col- lection from rural areas with carefully targeted projects. This is particularly important, not least, in the context of the high unemployment rate (25%) in the country, and the poor chances of being hired as a trainee here. John Hunt, Managing Director of Mpact Recycling, explains the rea- sons for opting for the Krones system: “We talked to operators of recycling systems, converters and beverage producers all over the world and looked at quite a few different models. But one process in our view entailed In the ballistic separator, in two stages flat con- taminants like foils from the bottles, and lighter ones like dirt, dust and glass, etc. are removed