Gunze announces completion of Circular Factory

Gunze Limited announces that it will complete the transformation of its Moriyama Factory, the core of its plastic film business, into a Circular Factory™ (Resource Recycling Factory) on April 18. The factory will not only utilise solar energy and large water resources as energy, but will also consider products and raw materials that were discarded without use in the traditional linear system of "Take (resource extraction), Make (production), and Waste (disposal)" as new resources, creating a manufacturing system that recycles resources without producing waste. The plant will be a high-tech facility with a production system that recycles resources without producing waste.

In December 2019, Gunze established "Promoting a Basic Policy Toward a Recycling System for Plastics," declaring that 50% of the raw materials used in the plastics business will be recycled and biomass by 2027, and that the ratio will increase to 100% by 2030. The Circular Factory is a zero-emission factory that produces no plastic waste. The company will then recover its own multilayer films with various types of materials and establish technologies for separating and recycling various types of materials to realize the commercialization of 100% recyclable raw materials.

The Moriyama Circular Factory is located at 163 Morikawahara-cho, Moriyama-city, Shiga, Japan and manufactures shrinkable film for labels. It spans 10,786 sq.m. and constructed at an investment of 9,494 million yen  

Upon completion of the Circular Factory, a recycling centre will be established by 2026 to separate and recycle on a commercial basis various type of multilayer films, such as nylon and PET, which have been difficult to do with conventional technology.

The current trend for packaging materials that require gas barrier properties is towards mono-materials that are easy to recycle, but the company will promote the use of this separation and regeneration technology to take advantage of our core competence, which is technology to add functionality through multilayering.

In the plastic film business, the company has adopted the strategy of "Transforming ourselves into a circular manufacturer" by 2030, and will use the technology of the Moriyama Circular Factory to apply the know-how to other production sites, including those overseas, so that the entire Plastics Group will be committed to zero plastic waste by 2030.