XTREME RENEW: recycling system for one-step preform production

Austria – In co-operation with SIPA of Italy, which specialises in complete manufacturing lines for PET containers, Austrian recycling technology supplier Erema has launched a new system dubbed XTREME RENEW that enables direct processing of washed PET flakes for food-contact-compliant, inline preforms in a single processing step.

When heated, the food-contact-compliant melt produced by Erema’s VACUREMA technology runs directly into the XTREME production process, developed by SIPA, to make preforms in a single step. This eliminates the common intermediate cooling stage often used in pellet production, thus giving ‘an enormous boost’ in terms of energy efficiency as well as ‘considerably’ lower thermal damage to the PET material.

‘Although PET recycling is currently not very profitable, in my experience with customers, the reason why a producer decides in favour of a major investment in a recycling solution is based on a broad-sighted, entrepreneurial approach,‘ comments Christoph Wöss, business development manager for bottle applications at Erema. ‘Only those companies which are willing and able to adapt will remain in the constantly-fluctuating plastics industry in the long term.’