The German waste system operator Reclay Group (Herborn; www.reclay-group.com) is expanding to France, where it intends to stir up competition in the licensing of packaging. For this purpose, a new recovery and recycling system called Léko (Paris / France; www.leko-organisme.fr) was set up at the end of October. One of the seven shareholders is the French Reclay subsidiary, Valorie SAS (www.valorie.fr). The application for registration with the French government is to be submitted at the end of November. Léko anticipates a positive reply by the end of January 2017 and will enter the market in 2018.

The aim of the new recovery and recycling system for packaging is to offer signed-up companies from trade and industry for the first time an alternative to the existing monopoly system of the French recycling organisation Eco-Emballages (www.ecoemballages.fr), and to ensure cost transparency and improved service. Reclay describes France's recycling system as one of the most complicated, producer-unfriendly and expensive in Europe. In cooperation with manufacturers, local authorities, recyclers, trade associations and consumers, Léko will work on modernising and simplifying the system in order to improve quality and quantity in the recycling of packaging materials.

According to Reclay, 650 companies in France with a market share of over 20% are supporting the licensing of the new recovery system. The new candidate, Léko, has also said it wants to raise the current 'French packaging recycling quota of 67% to 75%. Other recycling players also welcome the potential opening-up of the segment. In market circles it has been said that ERP France, a subsidiary of the German waste system operator Landbell, is also being quoted as a candidate for the licensing period from 2018 to 2022 as a further competitor to Eco-Emballages.

In order to modernise the packaging recycling system in France and increase the efficiency of the existing systems generally, Eco-Emballages had announced in late summer an extensive investment package for new sorting centres (see Plasteurope.com of 24.08.2016).

The RECobal recovery system supported by Reclay in Slovakia has since been successfully started up, according to the latest information to come from Reclay. Not only has the collected volume gone up, there has also been an increase in the number of documented waste categories. Since the start of operations on 1 July 2016 (see Plasteurope.com of 29.09.2015), more than 50 customers have apparently joined the system operator in order to meet their legal obligations from the new Slovakian waste management act. With the help of RECobal, the recovered quantity of used post-consumer packaging has more than doubled compared with the previous system. The reasons for this, according to Reclay, were the intensification of public relations and the further development of the collection infrastructures. Since July, alongside glass, paper and PET, other plastics, composite beverage materials and metal packaging have also been documented separately.

In Germany, the recovery and recycling of all packaging licensed with the Reclay Group will be carried out exclusively via the dual system, Redual (Herborn / Germany). The second dual system, Vfw, also operated until now by the subsidiary company Reclay Systems GmbH, will cease operations with effect from 31 December 2016. For customers and disposal partners, nothing will change as regards the system. From 2017, Redual will take over the licensing of all fractions and all regions of the sister company, Vfw, in line with the packaging ordinance.

The present operation of two dual systems resulted from the takeover of Vfw by Reclay in 2012. Since then, the recovery and recycling of the lightweight packaging and paper and board fractions was performed via the original Reclay system, Redual, while that of the glass fraction was carried out through the Vfw system.