More than 117 representatives of the plastics industry from 24 countries met for an open day at the Upper Austrian mechanical engineering company Next Generation Recycling Machines (NGR) in Feldkirchen, Germany this month.
In cooperation with the German machine supplier and extrusion specialist KUHNE, an innovative recycling process for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) was demonstrated.
Developed by NGR, the Liquid State Polycondensation (LSP) recycling method displays new possibilities for the plastics industry, as previous methods of recycling PET back to near-virgin quality has shown limitations.
NGR
Achieving food grade standards, decontamination and rebuilding of the molecular chain structure takes place in the liquid phase of the PET in the LSP process, allowing recyclers more flexibility to input materials.
Different forms of PET waste can be mixed and recycled, including scrap fibre, sheet, thermoform waste, strapping, and other lower value scrap streams.
It has also been demonstrated that PET/PET-G and PET/PE compounds can be easily and safely processed using LSP without any limitations, which was not previously possible with conventional recycling processes.
Josef Hochreiter, CEO of Next Generation Recycling Machines, said: "The fact that representatives of the world's largest plastics companies have joined us in Feldkirchen shows that with the Liquid State Polycondensation we at NGR have developed an innovation that will help to get the worldwide problem of plastic waste under control.”