— By Plasteurope.com correspondent — 

Portuguese automotive plastic components manufacturer Simoldes Plastics, a subsidiary of automotive supplier Simoldes (Oliveira de Azeméis; www.simoldes.com), and Swedish compounder Polykemi (Ystad; www.polykemi.se) have completed a project comparing the performance of recyclates and virgin materials in automotive moulding tools, an application area that previously only utilised the latter. The partners said all tests demonstrated that recyclate plastics can replace virgin grades in these applications.

The collaboration between technical experts at the two companies followed a request from Simoldes Plastics’ automotive customers to increase the proportion of recycled plastics in their products, as is expected to be required by the EU End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation (ELV), while retaining performance characteristics of the final product. The partners then extensively tested the behaviour of high-quality mechanically recycled plastics supplied by Polykemi in moulds made for virgin materials, using them for interior door frames and panels.

According to the companies, the performance of high-quality recyclates shows no difference to that of virgin plastics. “All evaluations have shown results above expectations,” said Mariusz Nowak, project manager for research and innovation at Simoldes Plastics.

Jörgen Olsson, technical manager for plastics applications and processing specialist at Polykemi, added that being able to produce equally high-quality end products using existing moulds is a “dream outcome”, since it means the transition away from virgin plastics would not require major investments in machinery nor personnel training.

The tests also evaluated how recycled materials cope with more complicated processes, such as insert moulding. Results from tests involving recyclate-based ABS injection moulding grades and either textile or foil in the moulds were equivalent to those moulded with incumbent grades, according to Simoldes Plastics.

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Polykemi offers recycled materials in two product groups, including its Repro family of standard grades and its Rezycom line of customised grades, according to the company.

The Swedish firm’s high-quality compounds based on recycled raw materials deliver corresponding technical properties similar to virgin materials, with lower carbon emissions. It noted that the use of compounds from Simoldes Plastics would lower carbon emissions by 54% to 68% per manufactured part.