Italian PET recycler Dentis (Sant’Albano Stura; www.dentispet.it) is expanding capacity at its site in Piedmont to handle about 130,000 t/y of post-consumer PET bottles. The company expects the expansion to be complete some time in 2024.

The project kicked off in 2021 when Dentis purchased two recoSTAR PET 330 HC iV+ recycling systems made by Starlinger (Vienna; www.starlinger.com). The lines, which have a combined output of 50,000 t/y, were commissioned in summer 2022, converting post-use bottles into high-quality food-grade rPET pellets that Dentis sells under the Repeter brand name. Dentis also produces rPET bottle flakes under the name Petalo.

Related: Coripet expands plastic bottle reclaim initiative

“We want to support the transition from a linear economy to a circular economy. With technology from Starlinger we can be sure that the recycled PET we produce meets the elevated standards of our customers in the food and beverage packaging sector,” said Dentis co-owner Roberto Dentis. “By producing high-quality food-grade recycled PET pellets we are able to maintain a closed loop for PET bottles and contribute effectively to achieving the European recycling targets, making post-consumer plastic packaging no longer a waste to be disposed of but turning it into an important resource for top-quality packaging.”

This year, Dentis is anticipating recycling a total of 80,000 t/y used PET bottles collected through the Italian collection systems operated by Corepla (Milan; www.corepla.it) and Coripet (Milan; www.coripet.it) – the recycler is one of Coripet’s founding members. Dentis also operates two other PET recycling sites in Europe – one in Valencia, Spain, and the other in Lille, France. The total volume processed is more than 270,000 t/y of PET bottles.

Besides approvals for food-packaging use from numerous big brand owners, Starlinger said its PET recycling process has also received positive opinions from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA, Parma, Italy; www.efsa.europa.eu), as well as Letters of No Objection (LNOs) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA, White Oak, Maryland; www.fda.gov).