PETrecycling CZ is non-commercial, independent, free & unsponsored Czech web portal for funs, communities, administrative, law-makers, politicians, PET plastic industry etc. in the Czech Republic.

My closing statement read: "There is only one real effective and incentive method to encourage environmentally sound collecting of beverage one-way containers and it is deposit in combination with High-Tech R&D resulted Reverse Vending Machines!"

Amcor expands PET packaging recycling

THE European PET packaging operation of leading packaging company Amcor has invested 18 million euros in the further expansion of its recycling plant in Beaune, France.

The latest enhancements mean the plant will now be able to produce 21,000 tonnes of resin pellets each year from over 30,000 tonnes of post-consumer PET, equivalent to some 600 million PET bottles, according to Bruno Vincent, general manager, Amcor PET Recycling France.

The expansion at Beaune was the result of co-operation between Amcor PET Packaging (formerly Schmalbach-Lubeca PET Containers) and the Bühler Technology Group. The resulting new recycling system was the first of its kind worldwide and had enabled the plant to treble production volume while improving its cost effectiveness.

“Production capacity of Amcor’s SuperCycle food grade resin will increase from 6000 to 15,000 tons a year. In addition, Amcor has installed further capacity for 5000 tons of NuCycle resin for non-food applications,” Vincent said.

A brand new wash line had also been installed in a new building, together with warehousing to store the PET flake. Around 80 pere cent of this flake would be processed on the three recycling lines at Beaune, while the remainder will be sold on to other users.

He said this investment illustrated how advanced its PET recycling technology had become, capable of recycling even multi-layer PET bottles. There were currently no other reliable sources for large, consistent, high-quality quantities of recycled PET in Europe.

“Key to this latest success is the combining of two previously separate functions of the SuperCycle process into one continuous operation.

Firstly, in a ring extruder, the post-consumer PET material is dried and freed completely from any organic impurities. Immediately afterwards, in the continuous solid state polycondensation (SSP) process, the polyester is refined to plastic pellets of greater material strength and thus gains the same properties as virgin PET pellets,” Vincent said.

“The combination of these two functions increases output and reduces both energy consumption and production costs. The process is also environmentally compatible, since it is based exclusively on thermal and mechanical process stages without the need for chemical treatment of the material.

“When PET recycling began, the majority of post-consumer waste was converted into fibre, but there is a limited market for this material,. The largest end-use for PET is beverage bottles, while fibre in Europe is only 25 per cent of total PET usage.

“Given these circumstances, and the fact that recycled PET production is expected to increase by 30 per cent in the coming years, it is simple, environmentally sound logic that recycled PET becomes part of the PET supply for beverage bottle production,” he said.

Amcor PET Packaging is the No. 1 producer of PET packaging in the world with 51 plants operating in 20 countries, two of which are bottle-to-bottle recycling plants.

7 February 2003