Ambiente: Portuguese recycler produces high-quality recycled pellets from washed agricultural film and detergent bottles - Starlinger system

Ambiente S.A. recycles dirty and strong-smelling post-consumer detergent bottles and agricultural film - (Pictures: Starlinger).

The Portuguese plastics recycling company Ambiente S.A. produces high-quality odour-treated recycled pellets from washed agricultural film and detergent bottles on a Starlinger recycling system of the type ‘recoStar dynamic 165 C-VAC’.

The Starlinger system was commissioned in June 2024 at Ambiente's new plant in Leiria, north of Lisbon. The company recycles both industrial and household plastic waste there. Much of it consists of used LDPE agricultural film and HDPE detergent bottles, which Ambiente uses to produce pellets for film extrusion and blow moulding applications.

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‘It is important for us to produce a high-quality recycled product that can be reused in the same application,’ says Paulo Pires, Managing Director of Ambiente S.A. ‘Our aim is to establish a circular economy. By that I mean a closed loop within the respective application - for example, irrigation pipes become irrigation pipes again, agricultural film becomes agricultural film, food packaging becomes food packaging, and so on. We also want to open up new areas of application for input materials with strong odours and high levels of contamination. To achieve this, all impurities must be removed as thoroughly as possible in the recycling process. That is why we invest in the best available technology - from washing, extruding and filtering to odour treatment. Our aim is to generate both economic and environmental benefits by providing the plastics industry with a sustainable and competitive raw material, making the circular economy a reality."

Odour-improved recycled pellets
The ‘recoStar dynamic 165 C-VAC’ recycling system installed at Ambiente is equipped with Starlinger's odour reduction technology and processes HDPE detergent bottles and washed post-consumer agricultural film made from LDPE. "Agricultural films are used for a wide variety of applications - for example in greenhouses, as crop covers or for silage. This means that even after washing, organic residues are still present that cause gases in the subsequent recycling process,’ explains Paul Niedl, Commercial Director of Starlinger recycling technology. "In the case of packaging applications such as detergent bottles, the odour of the contents migrates into the packaging material during storage and use. Our odour reduction technology is designed to permanently remove such odours so that the recycled pellets produced are suitable for high-quality applications. Instead of downcycling, it can be reused in the same application, creating a closed loop."

In the ‘Pellet Conditioning Unit’, the recycled pellets are given the finishing touches and become permanently odour-reduced material.

The entire recycling process can be customised depending on the contamination and odour intensity of the input material and the desired specifications of the recycled pellets produced, in order to process a wide range of input materials. The treatment process begins with the shredding and homogenisation of the input material in the ‘Smart’ feeder, in which the material is also heated to the ideal operating point. Volatile odours are already extracted in this process step. After the main extruder, the melt is filtered in continuous melt filters to remove solid impurities so that they cannot release any odours in the subsequent process steps. The subsequent C-VAC module increases the surface area of the melt by 300 per cent, which is intended to achieve an extremely high degassing efficiency. This should ensure that even deep-seated odours are permanently removed. In the final step, the recycled pellets produced at the end of the recycling process are treated in the so-called Pellet Conditioning Unit (PCU) to remove particularly stubborn odours.

The high-quality odour-treated HDPE and LDPE regranulate produced by Ambiente S.A. is suitable for a wide range of applications.

According to the machine manufacturer, this guarantees a permanently odour-optimised recycled pellet that can be used for the production of a wide range of plastic products.

Portuguese recycling pioneer
The roots of Ambiente S.A. go back to 1953, when the parent company, the Portuguese plastic film factory Fabrica Leiriense de Plasticos, was already recycling internal production waste. From the early 1970s, Fabrica Leiriense de Plasticos also processed externally collected plastic waste, including material imported from European countries such as Germany. In the 1990s, the company became a pioneer in the recycling of domestic plastic waste in Portugal.

Ambiente S.A. was founded in 1989. Registered as an independent company since 2000, Ambiente currently employs 36 people and recycles 7,000 tonnes of post-consumer, industrial and household waste every year. The resulting recycled LDPE and HDPE pellets are suitable for extrusion, blow moulding and injection moulding applications and are supplied to customers in Europe and North Africa.

More information: www.starlinger.com, www.ambiente-sa.com

Starlinger & Co. GmbH, Vienna, Austria

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