Starlinger Viscotec's award winning rPET to make a clean sweep at Greenplast

The rPET100 sheet material for thermoformed packaging by Starlinger viscotec is designed for recycling. In March, the material was awarded the Re|focus Sustainable Innovation in Material Award 2022. The group is exhibiting the material at Greenplast this week in Milan.

The Sustainability Innovation awards recognise outstanding innovations in plastics manufacturing that further environmental advantages in design, material, and end of life management.

Jeff Cornell, President of American Starlinger-Sahm Inc., said: “We observe a strong food packaging trend towards increased post-consumer recycled (PCR) content. Many brand-owners have committed to increasing PCR content in water and carbonated soft drinks bottles. These commitments have driven demand and prices up for clear post-consumer recycled bottle flakes. rPET100 helps to tackle this challenge because both PET tray and bottle flakes can be the feedstock for the recycled material. After its use, rPET100 packaging can be recycled back into food and beverage packaging.”

Starlinger viscotec is exhibiting the rPET100 material at Greenplast in Milan (3-6 May) from booth No. #B32.

The new sheet material is the first packaging material that combines three properties: heat-resistance (up to 100°C); made from 100 per cent recycled content; and 100 per cent recyclable in food-grade quality, making it a sustainable alternative to single-use packaging with material properties that degrade with each recycling loop.

According to Cornell, rPET100 contains natural-based mineral fillers, and no other stabilisers or other polymer additives, which would impede recycling in the food packaging loop. Perfect recyclability is the key requirement to enable tray-to-tray recycling while maintaining the highest packaging quality in terms of mechanical strengths and a high-quality optical appearance.

The material can be produced and recycled with existing mechanical recycling technologies. In a solid state polycondensation unit, post-consumer PET flakes are decontaminated to produce food grade PET flakes. The material is fit for direct food contact after this super-cleaning process. Plus, the mechanical properties are restored by increasing the intrinsic viscosity of the material, up to the levels of virgin material.

Starlinger viscotec’s PET sheet extrusion lines are designed to produce sheet made from recycled PET and can run 100 per cent recycled material.

Cornell added: “The technology and machinery needed to produce and recycle thermoformed packaging made from rPET100 is available and established in the recycling and packaging industry. rPET100 sheet material is thermoformable like conventional PET, polypropylene, or polystyrene.”