PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2016

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 16 PET planet Insider Vol. 17 No. 12/16 www.petpla.net 12 th International Recycled Polyester and PET Packaging Conference, China The pressure of low crude oil and virgin PET prices by Dr. Ulrich Thiele, Co-organiser Yu Zheng, Sales Engineer, Sorema div. of Previero N. Srl. This summary captures highlights of the two day Recycled Polyester and PET Packaging Conference which took place September 21 – 23 in Shanghai, China. Despite the pressure of low crude oil and virgin PET prices on the polyester recycling industry, the 280 participants and exhibition visitors from China and abroad demonstrated their ongoing interest. As in 2015 the issue PET packaging enriched the whole rPET policy group with raw material sources and applications. The conference programme tackled three main topics: economy & market, process & equipment and processing & application. Of particular interest within the first topic “economy & market” was the contribution of Lin Shidong, Secretary General, Recy- cled Fiber Commission of CCFA. He described the current state of polyes- ter recycling industry in China which is suffering from declining opera- tional rates (61.4% in 2010 to 56.5% in 2015) of a large number of non- standard small companies. Another criticism was the constant high rate of imported waste of about 40% or 2.0- 2.2mio t/a. As a consequence of this he expressed the need for a government policy to increase efforts in the recy- cling of polyester textile waste and fur- ther improvements in waste collection systems and infrastructure. The presentations of the PET Pack- aging Conference in particular, gave a detailed view of economic environ- ment. Hou Hui, Senior Economist of the Economic and Technology Research Center of Sinopec described in his pres- entation “Outlook for global petroleum market in 2017” the current dilemma of low oil prices and the ongoing economic restructuring in China. His compre- hensive economic analysis included a look back at the history of the global economy as looking at forecasts for the future. Based on detailed market informa- tion the paper “Polyester Market 2016: Review and Perspective” was pre- sented by Zhao Cheng, Dpt. Manager of Information at CCFEI. The analysis contained the 2016 market develop- ment of PX, PTA, MEG and polyester as well as the expectations for the immediate future. A new tool to organ- ise and improve industrial processes was introduced by Chen Qinghua, President of Shanghai DataCVG Co. Ltd. with his presentation “We Support rPET Industry with Big Data”. This project underlined the need to first of all implement systems and hard-ware that are then able to gener- ate, collect and process “Big Data”. This is particularly important for all new investments in the industry. The second topic “process & equip- ment” was dominated by machinery and process providers from Europe. Axel Hannemann, Head of Business Unit Fibers and Pellets at Gneuss Kunststofftechnik GmbH introduced their latest development: a reactor system dedicated to lift up polymer intrinsic viscosity especially useful for the recycling of PET fibre waste. An interesting approach to increase the economy of the flake pro- duction process was provided by Yu Zheng, Sales Engineer, Sorema div. at Previero N. Srl. A new development in this process is that the by-products of flake washing lines like fines, cups and labels, coloured flakes, ther- moforms and skeletons which are normally disposed of as waste for incineration or land fill are converted into useful plastic compounds. Andreas Christel, Director Process Technology of Polymetrix AG