ISSUE FEATURES

Closing the PET circuit

Dr Thomas Friedlaender, Head of PET Recycling at Krones, gives an account of the food gradebottle-to-bottle recycling process that has successfully undergone trials at a customer’s facility.

PET has already become widely accepted in many areas of the beverage industry as the most compatible packaging material, a trend accelerated still further by the eco-compatible option of bottle-to-bottle recycling. Current market data gives the proportion of PET containers being recycled into new bottles in Europe as 15%. And the figure is steadily rising. Affordable production of PET beverage containers from PET regrind means savings on costs for raw materials and reducing the amount of refuse dumped in landfills, while simultaneously meeting the demand for PET bottles.

Krones is now offering a complete PET recycling line developed in-house.The idea behind this bottle-to-bottle recycling process is to make used PET bottles available again for their original purpose. This requires certified regrind, approved for coming into direct contact with food stuff and beverages.

After Krones had successfully gathered some initial experience with PET recycling plants, both in Switzerland and in Germany, it was the company’s declared goal to develop its own compact-size bottle-to-bottle recycling system for bottlers and converters alike. Successful cooperation between the R&D department and universities has smoothed the path towards reaching this milestone. Plus, the vast majority of the process components and devices are manufactured in house.

Low operating costs, thanks to flakes
The compact system is modular in construction and has been dimensioned for outputs of 500 kg/hour or 1,000 kg/hour with the entire process sub-divided into a washing module and a B2B (bottle-to-bottle) module.These two can be offered together or separately. The washing module, as a stand-alone system, is also available for an output of 2,500 kg/hour.

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