Erema: Expansion of premises, world premiere of VACUREMA PRIME and Open House

What started in 1983 with a vision and the founding of a small enterprise was recently bursting at the seams. EREMA Engineering Recycling Maschinen und Anlagen Ges.m.b.H. (www.erema.at) in Upper Austria threw open its doors to celebrate the official opening of an extensive expansion project. On 10 May the technology and market leader welcomed more than 300 guests from the industry coming from all five continents. On top of the official ribbon cutting ceremony, the guests were invited to take a guided tour of the company and participate in a technical symposium on the complex subject of PET bottle recycling and witness the world premiere of the new VACUREMA PRIME (Photo). The event was rounded off with an open house event for all employees and their families.

"Becoming the market leader worldwide is a huge achievement; staying the leader worldwide even more so," exclaimed Upper Austrian provincial governor Dr. Josef Pühringer in his opening address, praising the three pioneering company founders as well as the current EREMA management team. Facing competition from more than 30 international companies, the Ansfelden based company has been well ahead since 1993. "In the few years that we have been involved in the recycling branch, EREMA really has become the number one," said one of the many visitors, "and I don´t believe there is another company able to deliver technology anything like that offered by EREMA." With an export quota of 98% and more than 2000 customers worldwide, EREMA almost reached the € 100 million "sound barrier" in the previous year with an increase in turnover of 25%.

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This is why expansion was needed so urgently. With an investment of around € 6.5 million, office space was doubled last year to approx. 5000 m² and the production area enlarged by around 40% to over 7300 m². And the result is really impressive. "The new EREMA building is very modern and highly attractive", said Šárka Havlová, project manager at the southern Bohemian company SILON s.r.o. based in Planá nad lužnicí in the Czech Republic, "the architecture features a lot of glass so the building appears very open and friendly."

Technical symposium on PET bottle recycling
While EREMA offers recycling technology for virtually all types of thermoplastic materials, the open house event focused on recycling PET - bottles in particular. The symposium took place in the afternoon and was opened by the EREMA sales manager, Andreas Kreindl, who talked about the sales success of the VACUREMA range over the last few years. The bottle-to-bottle and inline sheet recycling applications are the largest segments, each accounting for around 1/3 of the more than 80 VACUREMA plants in operation. With 16 plants already sold in 2007, the annual production capacity of all VACUREMA systems together of 400,000 tonnes has already been exceeded this year.

In his paper on VACUREMA BASIC, the head of the project department, Gilbert Netter, highlighted the specifications for inline sheet applications. Despite varying degrees of inner and outer moisture, it is possible with the VACUREMA technology to attain stable IV values and meet FDA approval for end products at the same time as achieving remarkably low energy consumption.

For higher IV specifications, as often stipulated for bottle-to-bottle recycling, there is VACUREMA ADVANCED technology, presented on this occasion by the new VACUREMA product manager, Christoph Wöss. Here, a vacuum crystallisation dryer is fitted upstream of the VACUREMA BASIC reactor.

The special significance of effective fine filtration as an important part of PET bottle to bottle recycling was the subject discussed by Harald Thumfart, product manager for EREMA filter systems. With up to 12 active filter units arranged in parallel, EREMA offers semi-constant pressure conditions and a much larger active filter surface area than most of its competitors. One of the absolute highlights of the event was the presentation of the new VACUREMA PRIME by CEO Manfred Hackl. This add-on expansion phase to the modular VACUREMA system involves installing a second vacuum pre-processing unit in front of the continuous VACUREMA BASIC system. The two units are operated batch-wise with precisely-defined dwell times, achieving extremely efficient decontamination and capable of outputting IV values well in excess of 0.84, as is often specified for specific applications.

VACUREMA PRIME prototype in action
Following the symposium the visitors had the opportunity to inspect the first VACUREMA PRIME with a production capacity of up to 20,000 tonnes per year. The plant was ordered by the American company AMCOR PET Packaging, and is heading to North America. On this day more than 300 guests from the industry were able to experience EREMA - with its excellent range of machinery, pioneering innovations and highly motivated team - as the technology and market leader worldwide.

Erema - Engineering Recycling Maschinen und Anlagen Ges.m.b.H., Ansfelden/Österreich

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