Using VACUREMA technology to produce 100 per cent rPET trays, Faerch has established a closed loop for PET food packaging
The now-established phrase ‘From niche to must-have’ describes how plastics recycling has evolved in recent years. Faerch, as a Denmark-based plastic packaging manufacturer and EREMA customer, has contributed to this by becoming the first company in the world to successfully integrate the recycling of European post-consumer PET household pots, tubs and tray packaging into its own production process.
Faerch is recognised as a leading manufacturer of food packaging, largely made from PET thermoforming film well suited to many applications, especially in the food sector. Faerch produces trays for ready meals, fresh meat, takeaway meals and packaging for dairy products for well-known food producers and trading companies around the world. The packaging must meet the highest quality standards for direct contact with food, and must meet special functional criteria.
A closed loop for food trays
The trays Faerch produces are fully recyclable and, depending on the PET type (CPET, MAPET or APET), are made of up to 100 per cent recycled post-consumer PET (rPET). This is because in comparison to bottle-to-bottle recycling, where the circular economy has been established, closing the material loop of PET trays has lagged behind.
Christoph Wöss, Business Development Manager at EREMA Group GmbH, said: "For us it was clear that with purpose-specific modification of our flexible VACUREMA technology, tray-to-tray recycling could become just as much of a success story. Faerch was our first customer to be as convinced of this as we were."
At Faerch's Netherlands-based recycling plant 4PET, PET bales obtained from collection and sorting companies throughout Europe are sorted, washed and recycled. Both post-consumer rPET flakes and pellets are supplied to packaging manufacturers and reused in the company's own production, making Faerch the only integrated recycler in the world capable of recycling used household PET packaging on an industrial scale and turning them back into new trays, according to Thomas Bak Thellesen, Senior Director Group Sustainability and External Affairs: “Trays from all over Europe are recycled to make 1.2 billion PCR PET trays per year. The aim is to quadruple the recycling capacity within the coming years. Without any compromises in terms of food contact compliance and functional properties, quality and sustainability must go hand in hand for us, because this is the only way we can offer our customers circular packaging solutions and drive the change necessary to establish an infrastructure needed to achieve a real circular economy."
To get the PET waste it needs, Faerch offers its own buyback models to customers who are able to collect the packaging again after use, such as airlines and catering companies. "For our production, this waste is a valuable raw material that we know is of the right quality."
The VACUREMA recycling process – safe, fast and flexible
Faerch has used the VACUREMA system with SafeFlake technology from Austrian recycling machine manufacturer EREMA for the recycling process for the trays since mid 2018. Special features include decontamination, drying and IV treatment, which take place on the flake in the vacuum reactor. Only then is the material fed into the extruder, preventing hydrolytic and oxidative degradation of the melt in the extruder – which is a prerequisite for highly clean, food contact compliant rPET trays with the best IV and colour values. The quality of the rPET pellets remains consistently high even if the parameters of the input material – e.g. moisture, mixture or bulk density – vary.
In addition to these quality aspects, the financial arguments also clearly speak in favour of this recycling process. This is because both the total costs of acquisition and use (total costs of ownership) and the energy consumption are comparatively low, as Wöss explained: "The specific overall energy consumption of a VACUREMA Prime system is only 0.295kWh/kg. This is one of the best energy efficiency values1 compared to conventional PET processing lines on the market."
Plastic packaging plays an important role in protecting the food we consume on a daily basis. Sustainable, circular solutions can thus significantly reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and food waste, and Faerch's tray-to-tray recycling solution is a prime example, alongside the well-established PET bottle-to-bottle solution, of how the circular economy can work.
Both EREMA and Faerch are convinced that many will follow this example in the near future. There is now a broad consensus that the circular economy has an important role to play in the transformation into a climate-neutral, resource-efficient and competitive industry.
- Source: SKZ – Das Kunststoff-Zentrum, value measured at a throughput of 1650 kg/h, excluding customer's chiller for supplying cooling water.