Amcor PET Packaging Europe/Asia (D-40880 Ratingen; www.amcor.com), formerly Schmalbach-Lubeca PET Containers has invested EUR 18m in construction work to expand its recycling facility at Beaune / France. The latest enhancements will boost the plant´s output capacity to 21,000 t of PET pellets per year, reground from more than 30,000 t of post-consumer PET, equivalent to almost 600m PET bottles. The expansion at Beaune is the result of a co-operation between Amcor PET Packaging and technology group Bühler to launch a new “breakthrough recycling system, the first of its kind worldwide.” With this system, the plant´s production volume will treble and its cost efficiency will be improved significantly. The production capacity for Amcor´s “SuperCycle” food grade resin will increase from 6,000 t/y to 15,000 t/y, while the production of “NuCycle” PET pellets for non-food applications will be boosted to 5,000 t/y.

According to Amcor, the latest investment illustrates the advanced quality of its current PET recycling technology capable of recycling even multi-layer PET bottles. The company claims that there are no other reliable sources for large, consistent, high-quality quantities of recycled PET in Europe at present. Key to this latest success is the combination of two previously independent functions of the “Super Cycle” process into one continuous operation.

In a ring extruder, the used PET material is dried and stripped of any organics contaminations. Immediately afterwards, the polyester is refined to plastics pellets with greater material strength similar to virgin PET pellets by way of the continuous solid state polycondensation process (SSP).

“When PET recycling began, the majority of post-consumer waste was converted into fibre, but there is a limited market for this material,” says Bruno Vincent, General Manager of Amcor PET Recycling France S.A. (F-21200 Beaune). “Beverage bottles are the main application for PET, while textile fibres represent only 25% of the European PET market. Given these circumstances, and the fact that the production of PET is expected to rise by 30% over the next few years, the increasing use of PET pellets for bottle production seems to be a logical choice under both economic and environmental aspects. Moreover, consumers and environmental regulation boards are increasingly favouring a system of bottle-to-bottle recycling.

The new eco-tax, which has been in force in Belgium since 20th March 2003, is a perfect example of the way in which manufacturers not committed to PET recycling will be penalised. This tax can be avoided if the produced packaging material contains a minimum of 50% of recycled PET – a clear incentive for bottling companies to use reground material.