PET RECYCLING AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

The bulk of this output is shipped to African customers, e.g., in domestic South Africa and Nigeria, but some product also goes to Western Europe, South Korea and even Australia.

“Doubtless, we owe not the least part of our renown to the performance and reliability of our EREMA equipment. As we now expand into food-grade rPET, we therefore opted for a VACUREMA system,” Chandru Wadhwani justifies his company's decision.

The new VACUREMA BASIC 1512 is preconfigured to support subsequent upgrading into a VACUREMA ADVANCED system at any time. This will involve the retrofit of an additional vacuum pretreatment vessel. In its current BASIC configuration, the system enables Extrupet to produce a food-safe recyclate with an intrinsic viscosity (IV) roughly on par with that of the input material. The upgraded ADVANCED version, on the other hand, would provide an intrinsic viscosity gain of around 3% in the future if and when necessary. On principle, this would even permit the production of new PET beverage bottles from 100% rPET.

With its new investment, Extrupet supports and assists the South African plastic production industry - and specifically, manufacturers of PET beverage bottles - in its voluntary commitment to return postconsumer raw materials into the product cycle in an economically and ecologically efficient manner.

Apart from Wadeville, Extrupet still maintains its original production facility at Cape Town and employs around 250 people at its two sites today. It was the Cape Town site where the company gathered its first experience with EREMA technology as far back as in the  1990s.

Sales Manager South Africa at EREMA Headquarters in Austria

Laszlo Padanyi: l.padanyi@erema.at