EDITOUR PETplanet Insider Vol. 26 No. 10/25 www.petpla.net 12 Producing your own rPET is sustainable SGT is one of the few preform manufacturers that produce their own rPET. Around 1 billion bottles produce 30,000 t of rPET. Over 40% of all preforms at SGT leave the factory with rPET content. The in-house production of rPET means that transport routes are very short. Lorries are not required. Interview with SGT // April 10, 2025 We met: Romain Claerebout, Plant Manager SGT Group, manufacturer of PET preforms and food-grade rPET based in Rezé, Loire-Atlantique, France, initially started in 1981 with PVC packaging. Today, SGT France operates with modern laboratories and 27 injection moulding presses at the 27,000m² plant in Rezé as well as an additional 29 injection moulding machines at four locations in Algeria. The company produces around 7 billion PET preforms in France and Algeria every year, as well as caps in Algeria. Turnover in 2024 was 400 million euros. The SGT Group acquired Axium Packaging at the beginning of this year. Axium produces injection- and blow moulding bottles, jars, and caps. With six entities and 385 employees, the company achieved a turnover of €76 million in 2024. Axium serves primarily cosmetics, health and wellness markets. The recycling division is called SGR (Société Générale de Recyclage). 30,000t of recycled PET (rPET) are produced under the SGR umbrella, 14,000t of which at a plant in Chalonsur-Saône, France, in 2018 and 16,000t at the headquarters since last year. In Chalon-sur-Saône, an SSP decontamination line from Bühler Polymetrix is used for food-grade rPET with underwater machining. For the new plant in Rezé, SGT did not opt for the solid (SSP) process, but ventured in the direction of the liquid process (LSP). (Fig. 2) In SSP - Solid State Polycondensation - the PET is treated after melt polymerisation as pellets under vacuum or inert gas (nitrogen) at high temperatures (180-220 °C). This increases the IV (intrinsic viscosity). Very high IV values can be achieved with this process and you have good control over the final viscosity. In LSP - Liquid State Polycondensation - polycondensation takes place directly in the melt (before granulation), often inline in the reactor stream. The process achieves target IV without a separate solid phase process. The process is more energy-efficient as no second heating step is necessary, production times are significantly shorter and it has a smaller footprint. On the other hand, the IV can only be increased to a limited extent and the process control requirements are higher. NGR’s LSP plant in Rezé started production in 2024. To guarantee the high quality of the rPET, all flakes Sponsors to date Plant Manager Romain Claerebout shows us the clean rPET granulate Editour
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