— By Plasteurope.com staff —

Supplier of composite carton solutions and filling machines Tetra Pak (Lund, Sweden; www.tetrapak.com) and environmental services provider Yellow Dreams (Herkenbosch, Netherlands) are investing around EUR 3 mn in the construction of a new recycling plant for polyAI in Ittervoort in the Netherlands. PolyAI refers to the thin polyethylene and aluminium layers in cardboard composite packaging. These materials act as a barrier against oxygen and moisture and help keep food fresher longer.

The plant, which is scheduled to go into operation in the second half of 2025, is located near the Belgian and German border and, according to Tetra Pak, will process the entire volume of polyAl from beverage cartons recycled in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as part of the volume from Germany. With an output of 20,000 t/y, this second plant in the Netherlands supplements the existing capacity of 8,000 t/y at the Rosendaal plant of Recon Polymers (Roosendaal, Netherlands; www.reconpolymers.com).

Related: Palurec plant for recycling plastic-aluminium components increases output

Preliminary recycling of beverage cartons takes place in 20 paper mills across Europe, where the paper fibres are separated from the polyAI components. Ten plants are now running throughout Europe for processing the polyAI fraction, including the Palurec plant in Cologne, which started operations in 2021. This plant is owned by Fachverband Kartonverpackungen für flüssige Nahrungsmittel (FKN, Berlin; www.getraenkekarton.de), the German trade association for carton packaging for liquid foods. Another system of this type in Germany was put into operation in Dessau-Roßlau in May 2024 by Saperatec (Dessau-Roßlau, Germany; www.saperatec.de).

The German Packaging Act (VerpackG) requires a recycling rate of 80% for beverage cartons. According to the central agency packaging register ZSVR (Osnabrück, Germany; www.verpackungsregister.org), the recycling rate last year was 64.8%. However, environmental associations criticise the fact that the published quotas are too high in comparison to the actual disposal – the composite cartons often end up in household waste instead of in the yellow bins.

— Translated by Elspeth Lenhard