Swedish packaging manufacturer Boxon (Helsingborg; www.boxon.com) is to produce big bags manufactured from recycled PET for the European market. The company told Plasteurope.com that the project is to start in Indonesia in partnerships with a local PET recycler. Boxon is the first European supplier of big bags made of recycled material in Europe.

The used PET bottles are collected from landfill sites in Indonesia and by individuals, who take the waste to domestic collection points. From here, the PET bottles are delivered to the processing facility of Boxon’s local partner, which already produces big bags for companies from the US and China. The bags consist of about 96% rPET and 4% additives, said Boxon.

All further processing takes place onsite – after the bottles have been separated by colour, they are first dry tumbled and cold washed to remove dirt. The bottles and caps are automatically separated, then the bottles are shredded to make PET flakes. These are hot washed and processed into ribbons, from which the big bags are produced.

Boxon estimates that for 1 kg of woven rPET, about 25 1.5 litre-bottles are processed. Approximately 50 PET bottles are used to manufacture an average 2 kg big bag.

The family-run packaging specialist has its head office is in Helsingborg / Sweden and was founded in 1932. In 2018, around 280 employees in Scandinavia, the EMEA region and China generated sales of around EUR 135m.