From recycled PET to food-grade preforms

The call to reduce the use of plastics in packaging has manufacturers addressing the way they design, use and produce products, and ensure product recyclability and compostability.

For PET container solutions specialist SIPA, participation in the circular economy has begun, with the company’s PET production technologies and designs aimed at minimising the use of materials and utilities. The Italian company considers all these in its innovation, the XTREME Renew.

XTREME Renew is a collaboration between SIPA and EREMA, the specialist in plastics recycling technologies in Austria. Combining EREMA’s Vacurema® technology and the XTREME from SIPA, this integrated system is for the production of preforms containing 100% of recycled PET, but with the same quality as preforms made from virgin PET. With that, SIPA touts this system as a solution to the circular economy.

The XTREME unit can process PET directly from the Vacurema recycling system in flake form. Recycled material need not be transformed into granules that would otherwise have to be cooled and then reheated. This feature allows the system to operate with less energy, create less carbon dioxide, and run at a lower cost.

Vacurema utilise innovative technology to produce recycled PET (rPET) flakes that are clean and ideal for food and beverage containers. In a fully integrated, fully automated, continuous process, the output is then fed directly to SIPA’s revolutionary XTREME rotary injection-compression platform for producing lightweight preforms at high speed and with high efficiency. The preforms can be as much as 10% lighter than preforms made on traditional injection molding systems.