Equipment company cites doubling of sales for its Intarema K product line.
Ansfelden, Germany-based equipment maker Erema has reported a 100 percent sales increase in its most recent fiscal year for its Intarema K automatic processing and recycling system for plastic film edge trim.
The company indicates that by the end of March 2018, more than 40 of the Intarema processing systems will have been shipped in the previous 12 months – twice as many compared to the previous financial year.
According to Erema Business Development Manager Andreas Dirnberger, the fact that customers are concentrating more on the recycling of clean edge trim can be explained largely by the increasing demand for high-quality film products and the associated expansion of production capacities.
“The material alone accounts for around 80 percent of the manufacturing costs of flexible packaging,” says Dirnberger. “If you consider the usual edge trim figure of around 10 percent in blown film manufacturing, recycling is a must-have in terms of cost efficiency.”
The edge trim that accumulates in production can be transferred directly from the blown film plant – without pre-shredding – to make high-quality scrap material. According to Dirnberger, 100 percent of the scrap material can then be put back into the production process.
“Thanks to the Intarema K, the film manufacturer reduces both material and production costs considerably as a result,” states Dirnberger.
Manfred Goellner, head of process engineering at Hosokawa Alpine, one of the largest producers of blown film plants in the world, comments, “We expect a recycling system to work with absolute reliability and fully automatically. This is why we have a machine built by Erema in use in our in-house technical center, and also recommend that our customers count on the Intarema K.”
The Intarema K is available to OEM customers such as Hosokawa Alpine as part of standardized system packages, but there also is high demand for it among end customers, according to Erema. Coveris Flexibles Austria runs blow and cast extrusion lines, printing and finishing machines and 20 recycling systems from Erema in Kufstein, Austria.
“We have been using fully automatic edge trim processing systems from Erema for many years, not least because the payback period for the compact systems is very short,” says Ferdinand Mikesch, head of process, engineering and technology at Coveris.
The Intarema K can be used to recycle several types of clean plastic scrap, according to Erema, including PE (polyethylene) mono- or multi-layer films; PE films with PP (polypropylene), PA (polyamide), EVOH (ethylene vinyl alcohol) or EV (ethylene vinyl); and breathable films such as PE with calcium carbonate.
The Intarema K’s preconditioning unit has been designed to enable automatic adjustments to varying input quantities, according to Erema. In the event of brief material shortages, the system switches to standby mode for maximum energy efficiency, the firm indicates.
UTE RM2 buys 17 AMS collection trucks to service Madrid’s waste and recycling collection contract.
A Spain-based consortium known as UTE RM2 has purchased 17 AMS side-loading collection trucks to provide waste collection services to the eastern part of Madrid.
UTE RM2 is a consortium made up of four of Spain’s largest environmental services companies: Valoriza Servicios Medioambientales, Acciona, OHL and Ascan. In November 2016 it was awarded a four-year contract to provide waste and recycling collection services to the eastern part of Madrid. The contract has an option to be extended for another two years.
The collection contract employs 750 people and serves a population of 1.1 million. The service is operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year to collect the 400,000 metric tons of municipal solid waste (MSW), recyclables and organic scraps produced by people living in the eastern part of Madrid.
The 17 new AMS trucks have been purchased from dealer Geesinknorba Spain in two capacities: six AMS CL1-N 22 units with 22 cubic meters of capacity and 11 AMS CL1-N 25 units of with 25 cubic meters of capacity.
The units are mounted onto Iveco Stralis 270-horsepower compressed natural gas (CNG)-powered 26-metric ton chassis. Each chassis has been fitted with Allison 3500R Series six-speed automatic transmissions, designed to reduce driver fatigue.
UTE RM2 has purchased more than 3,000 side-loading containers as well, in two different capacities: the smallest ones for the collection of organic waste and recyclable packaging and the larger ones for MSW. The lids of each container are identified by color, with brown used for organics, yellow for recyclable packaging and orange lids with a gray container for MSW.
The same AMS fleet of trucks delivers packaging scrap and MSW around the clock to the Valdemingomez plant. The facility is owned by Madrid City Council and processes all of the city’s recyclable packaging and prepares MSW for further transfer.
Satellite positioning systems are included in the new vehicles to provide geographic information showing the vehicles’ position on their collection routes. RFID aerials have also been fitted on the new vehicles to read the tags on the side loader containers, providing details of the time the container has been emptied.
The reporting of damaged containers is also recorded through the RFID system. The use of the software is designed to help UTE RM2 improve route efficiency and, where damaged containers have been reported, speed up replacement. The data also is sent to Madrid City Council to show them that all containers have been emptied in UTE RM2’S collection zone.
The introduction of the side loader collection system has helped UTE RM2 reduce external operating costs, according to the dealer Geesinknorba.
The decision to purchase the AMS side loaders from Geesinknorba Spain was because of “their proven reliability working in many other waste collection contracts across Spain,” according to the dealership.
The project's goal is to determine viable strategies for recycling multimaterial flexible plastic packaging.
The St. Paul, Minnesota-based Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) has begun a project to determine viable strategies for recycling multimaterial flexible plastic packaging currently being discarded by hospitals. The HPRC is working with researchers at the Plastics Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell to test whether commercially available compatibilizers improve blend properties when compounded with multimaterial flexible plastics. Additionally, through blending trials and material analysis, the project aims to identify potential end market applications for the recycled product.
“Based on our research and data, up to 60 percent of plastic waste generated by health care facilities is flexible material,” says Chris Rogers, HPRC project manager. “The challenge with health care flexibles is that they are often composed of multi-material laminates, which are unrecyclable when using common recycling technologies. Through this project, we hope to shed some light on the physical properties these materials will have when processed with different types of compatibilizers applied in varying concentrations. By better understanding these properties, recyclers can better determine potential opportunities to compound these materials with other products for resale markets and therefore better understand their value.”
Collection of flexible plastic materials, including sterilization wrap and Tyvek and film packaging, will begin at a number of hospitals by the end of March 2018. The goal is to collect and ship 2,000 pounds of material to the Erema Group, a Germany-based manufacturer of plastic recycling equipment, where it will undergo initial processing at its Ipswich, Massachusetts, facility.
After that, the material will be delivered to UMass Lowell, where compatibilizers will be added to the materials prior to extrusion and injection molding. Following this, the materials will undergo testing and analysis with project results anticipated by the middle of the summer of 2018.
The project is being funded by HPRC members Baxter, BD, DuPont, Eastman, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Nelipak Healthcare Packaging, with additional funding provided by the Flexible Packaging Association.
“Our end goal here is to help establish a methodology recyclers can use to process these flexible materials into recycled products and keep them out of landfills,” Rogers says.
UK aluminum recycler touts ability to match alloyed building material scrap with buyers.
Oldbury, United Kingdom-based Alutrade indicates it is working with “many of the U.K.’s top systems companies and fabricators” to match aluminum alloy scrap with targeted consuming destinations.
The company states that its “high-tech approach” toward aluminum scrap, which involves the full identification and segregation of scrap materials by their alloy type.
Aluminum in construction applications is “always used as an alloy, which means it is mixed with other elements to change is characteristics to suit the application,” states the company. On the one hand, aluminum scrap “can simply be melted and sold for production into a wide range of products, but by mixing the alloys, it is difficult to use the material again in its specific alloy grade,” according to Alutrade.
The firm states that its approach involves “first identifying the exact alloy that is being recycled using sophisticated X-ray equipment, and then employing state-of-the-art equipment which effectively strips all thermal breaks and other materials from the profile.”
What is left is the prime material, the alloy in its original state, can go back into the same product it came from without any loss of characteristics and at a 100 percent recyclability rate, according to Alutrade. “This is known as ‘closed-loop’ recycling, and as a result the recycled material has a higher value [and], consequently, Alutrade can generally offer higher prices for any aluminum requiring recycling,” the firm states in a March 2018 news release.
Alutrade is based in the Midlands of England and indicates that it serves “the whole of the U.K.,” supplying bins for the collection and recycling of aluminum profile scrap, including both new profile offcuts and profile from building remodeling or demolition projects.
Recycling association will host workshop on end markets in Baltimore area April 3, 2018.
The Brattleboro, Vermont-based Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) has announced that its Spring 2018 Workshop will focus on “the key market issues for paper, plastics, glass and compost.” The one-day event will take at the Sheraton Baltimore Washington Airport Hotel on Tuesday, April 3, 2018.
NERC is promoting the workshop under the title, “Markets or Bust—A Regional Workshop About Recycling Markets.” The group says attendees and exhibitors from the United States and Canada will gather “to participate in presentations and discussions that look at current issues affecting recycling markets.”
The workshop will open with introductory remarks from Secretary Ben Grumbles of the Maryland Department of the Environment. He will be followed by Myles Cohen as the keynote speaker. Cohen is the president of the Paper Stock Industries (PSI) Chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) and is an executive with Conyers, Georgia-based Pratt Recycling.
Pratt, a subsidiary of an Australia-based paper and board producer, bills itself as America’s fifth largest corrugated cardboard packaging company and the largest privately-held 100 recycled-content paper and packaging company.
Other speakers or panelists at the workshop include:
NERC indicates that “breakout sessions that will encourage attendees to actively participate in defining and illustrating market issues and recycling market development strategies” also will be part of the workshop.
More information on the event, including how to register, can be found on this web page.