Starlinger: Another PET Recycling Plant to France Plastique Recyclage

Bottle-to-bottle recycling is an industry with a future in France, says Philippe Bourdeix, president of France Plastique Recyclage (FPR) and consultant Bruno Vincent. The first recycling plant from Starlinger & Co. Ges.m.b.H. (www.recycling.starlinger.com) – a recoSTAR PET 165 iV+ and two viscoSTAR 75 lines for the extrusion/solid state polycondensation and decontamination of high grade pellets from recycled PET – began production in February 2008 in La-Neuve-Lyre. Now FPR, confirming its choice of technology, has signed a new contract for the purchase of plant machinery – a recoSTAR PET 165 iV+ HC recycling line and two viscoSTAR 120 solid stating reactors for an annual output of about 15,000 tons – to equip a newly erected recycling operation in Limay.

Among the criteria which settled the decision for Starlinger was the excellent decontamination performance of the Austrian company’s recycling and solid stating technology, as demonstrated in decontamination challenge tests for French food safety certification, performed at the first plant and confirmed successful by the AFSSA (Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments). “This follow-up order from FPR is a further testimony to the fact that Starlinger recycling technology has firmly established itself among the top global players in the PET recycling field,” says Angelika Huemer, managing partner of the Viennese company. Starlinger has been awarded a number of national and brand owner food safety certifications for the lines. The energy-saving process concept, shown by calculating the energy consumed per kg of R-PET produced, was another argument in favour of Starlinger.

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“In an era of global exchange, the French industry needs to be using recycled materials instead of exporting waste,” Vincent has stated. Demand from the food packaging industry is already reflecting consumer preference for environmentally responsible packaging solutions. In the recycling industry itself, ecological production methods are an economical issue as well: “Of course our top priority is to improve the process in order to achieve an even greater degree of purity in the flakes, but we also take energy savings into consideration.”

Limay, located directly on the Seine west of Paris, has made a name for itself in recent years as a centre of industry. FPR’s new plant, scheduled to begin production in the second half of 2009, will process bales of collected used PET bottles first by extrusion into high quality pellets, which will then be transformed by polycondensation into foodcontact grade R-PET granulate. A major application for this material is the production of preforms, an initial stage in the production of PET bottles.

About France Plastique Recyclage (FPR)
Two years ago, the Sita Group and the Paprec Group decided to implement a complete plant specialising in the recycling of PET bottles. Because of the large population of greater Paris, a site was chosen in the Paris basin where available PET bottle waste is plentiful, states the Paprec Group, which specialises in the recycling of used paper. Paprec and Sita, the waste management subsidiary of Suez Environnement, are in the process of erecting a plant for recycling plastic bottles made of PET. Located at Limay, on the Seine River in the Yvelines district, the France Plastiques Recyclage (FPR) factory is scheduled to begin operation in mid-2009. Ist projected capacity, according to “Les Echos”, will be approximately 40,000 tons of pellets from recycled PET.

NPE 2009, 22.-26. June 2009, Chicago, USA, South Hall, Stand 34072

Starlinger & Co. Gesellschaft m.b.H., Wien, Vienna

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