EDITOUR 11 PETplanet Insider Vol. 23 recycling was the first company worldwide to successfully integrate the recycling of post-consumer PET trays and containers into its own production process. This business segment of PET tray recycling will grow all the more the less multilayer products are used in the trays. Design for recycling should thus arrive in reality as soon as possible. PETplanet: The topic of PVC in PET comes up again and again. What does it look like today? Mr Heitzinger: As a rule, PVC gets into the PET quota via the labels. False PVC batches themselves are hardly to be found any more, or the pre-sorting systems have improved considerably in order to find more false batches in the process. This pre-sorting technology should be used as much as possible in order to be able to produce the necessary top quality in the end. We have already mentioned dyed PET. Another obstacle that can be solved is the direct printing of PET bottles and the direct printing of PE/PP caps on PET bottles. This is because this colour issue deteriorates the quality of the raw material, cannot be filtered out and remains in the recycling cycle or accumulates in the recycling cycle. PETplanet: You also produce systems for typical post-consumer plastic waste. What is the focus here? Mr Heitzinger: A simply question for a very diverse and large recycling area at Erema. We have seen a huge increase in orders for rPET systems, but the classic polyolefin share at Erema is still around 60% - 70% of the order intake. We are going in three main directions with our customers. One of them is to bring well-sorted, processed material streams in the film fraction up to the quality level of virgin material. Here, paper labels, tags and adhesives are the core problems that need to be worked on in processing. Perfect filtration and optimised pressures and mass temperaturs are essential here. The second main thrust goes into the reprocessing of classic post-consumer material, with varying degrees of moisture and contamination. Homogenisation capacity, power and filtration capacity of the plant are the key issues here. The third area is the professional processing of HDPE regrind with Regrind Pro Technology +Refresher for FDA approval. And the same applies to the polyolefin sector as to PET - no multilayers, please! PETplanet: A great finish. Many thanks for the interview. www.erema-group.com
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