Artenius, the PET resins division of plastic packaging group La Seda de Barcelona (LSB, Barcelona / Spain; www.laseda.es/index_en.php), has developed a packaging material that combines virgin PET resin with up to 50% post-consumer recycled PET. The company said the “Artenius Elite” resins are suitable for packaging beverages, including still and carbonated water.

“We have successfully created a PET packaging material that includes recycled resin in its manufacturing process, but with the same quality as virgin PET,” said Jordi Foguet, technology manager at Artenius.

Depending on the virgin base resin used, the product is suitable for processing as stretch blow moulding in one- and two-stage processes. Options for the virgin base resin are “Artenius Aqua”, “Artenius Flow” and “Artenius Fast Flow+”, while the post-consumer recycled PET content can be 10%, 25% or 50%,” said Foguet. Artenius produces the Elite resins at its site in Italy, and said it will soon also produce them in El Prat / Spain.

The chemical recycling process for the Elite resins involves de-polymerising the clean recycled PET, mixing it with standard virgin PET raw materials and then integrating both types of compounds into the re-polymerisation process. According to decontamination challenge tests conducted by Fraunhofer (www.fraunhofer.de), the resins produced are as pure as the 100% virgin resin, even under the worst case contamination scenarios, Artenius said.

The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) has ruled that the Artenius Elite process should not be treated differently from monomers manufactured by chemical synthesis, Artenius said. The process has been also approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through its non-objection letter.