PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2018

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 06/18 www.petpla.net 25 New potential, new processing, new challenges Hot PET recycling topics The second PRS Europe show held in Amsterdam in April this year was a great success, featuring over 100 exhibiting companies and more than 40 conference speakers who gave informative and inspirational presentations and which attracted more than 2,400 visitors over the two days. The show will move to a bigger exhibition hall in the RAI next year to enable a greater number of exhibitors to show more machinery in their booths. The 2018 conference programme caught the attention of a great many visitors. Ton Emans gave a warm welcome to decision-makers from the plastics recycling industry sitting in the audience. Not only European companies attended the show as the name of the event itself would imply. International visitors from China, Japan and the USA were also present to take part in discussions on current hot recycling topics in Europe and beyond. The opening conference ses- sion highlighted the great potential of PET recycling. Casper van den Dungen, Petcore, Johan Kerver, CEO of Fili Grade and Jean-Loup van de Wiele, Commercial Director and Owner of 4 PET Recycling, gave three interesting and forward-looking pres- entations on PET recycling. Casper van de Dungen asked the audience: “What can we expect from rPET towards 2025?” First of all, he provided figures on current PET recy- cling rates in Europe. PET recycling capacity rests on the shoulders of 115 PET recyclers with a total output of 2,000kt per year. Germany pro- duces the highest volume of 500kt per year, followed by France and Italy with 300kt, and Spain with about 200kt. The UK and the Republic of Ireland together have a capacity of 90kt, and Poland 80kt a year. For the 2016 market status of bottle mass, this means that total consumption is around 3.1million tons. 1.9mt were collected. 0.1mt have been used in direct net trade and 0.5mt gets lost in the process. In the end, 1.3mt were available as flakes. The majority of flakes are used for sheets and in the blow-moulding process, followed by fibre and strapping (Source: PCI Wood Mackenzie). For Casper, the key market developments needed to achieve greater potential involve the implementation of a bottle deposit system as, for example, in the UK. He explained the challenges involved in the collection of trays and non- food packaging - in this case, mark- ers and tracers need to be found to programme their road value. Both are required to achieve higher plastic recycling targets. Casper expects a potential increase of more than 1,500kt in the years to come. He also highlighted the need to develop differ- ent facilities for bottle, tray and chemi- cal recycling. Casper’s concluding remarks led neatly into the next speaker: Johan Kerver, CEO of Fili Grade. The company’s new product is the so- called watermark. This technology, introduced in the Holy Grail project Gian de Belder, P&G, at this year’s Petcore Europe Conference held in Brussels, is designed to make the sorting of plastics waste as simple as possible. This means that plas- tic packaging has its own unique fingerprint which makes it easily identifiable in all sorting systems. The fingerprint is visible for the machines but not to the end-consumer. Cam- eras used during the sorting process identify the inscribed watermark. The watermark is engraved directly into the mould. Every producer can have his own unique watermark. This system has many advantages for producers. They know full well where their products are sold and how they are regarded by consumers. Further- more, they can add many functions to the watermark for end-consumers, as well as an already established app. In addition to educating consumers who use the app to scan the product, it also gives them more information, for example, on the product or the company. For the sorting process, the watermark can help, for example, in identifying food grade or non-food plastics. Jean-Loup van de Wiele, explained the initial steps that are being taken in tray-to-tray recycling and identified three main areas: input, washing and repelletising. A quality sorting process is required for the input section to iden- tify colour, multilayer and lids sealed on the trays, as well as sorting adhering pollution and absorbent pads. Organic pollution, labels and adhesives can be found in the washing process. There will also be a high percentage of fines (<2mm) that need to be cleaned. The repelletising section covers filtration, the increase of the IV and food grade guarantee. 4 PET Recycling has taken matters into their own hands working with Sorema and Erema to develop the first trays’ recycling process. The company started feasibility trials at the end of 2014 which have proved to be successful. Sorema washing technol- ogy has developed a specific washing process for trays, as well as a PET fines’ washing line. Eremas Vacurema technology is used in the extrusion pro- cess converting fines into food grade pellets. By restoring the IV, the food approval is guaranteed. Preparatory work to install the equipment in Duiven, NL, already began in April and May 2018, with the start of trays’ recycling planned for June/July 2018. An update on the projects and technologies will be given in Amsterdam in 2019. www.prseventeurope.com RECYCLING S P E C I A L Ton Emans, President, Plastics Recyclers Europe by Heike Fischer