Henkel (Düsseldorf / Germany; www.henkel.com) and additive and colour specialist Ampacet (Tarrytown, New York / USA; www.ampacet.com) are developing black plastic packaging that is fully recyclable. The new material uses an alternative to carbon black, and this enables used bottles to be integrated back into the value chain. Most black plastic packaging is coloured using carbon black pigments and cannot be optically identified by many recycling facilities that largely use near infrared (NIR) detection for plastics sorting.

Henkel will introduce black bottles for "Bref" toilet cleaning products in May 2019, followed by additional Henkel products during 2019. The two companies are also piloting the new black packaging for other products. Cyclos-HTP (Aachen / Germany; www.cyclos-htp.de), an institute specialised in the validation and certification of recyclability of packaging and goods, has certified that Henkel’s bottles with this carbon-free black are fully detectable and sortable. As a next step, Henkel says it is driving the integration of recycled content in its packaging.

Ampacet's strategic business manager for moulding, Philippe Hugelé, says the company's “Rec-NIR-Black” carbon-black free masterbatch is part of its sustainability initiative. During the “Plastics Recycling Show Europe” (PRSE) in April 2019 – see Plasteurope.com of 02.05.2019 – the US masterbatch producer won a “Plastics Recycling Awards Europe” 2019 award for Rec-NIR-Black in the category “Product Technology Innovation”.