XTREME Renew bags World Star Packaging Award

The XTREME Renew system enables production of PET bottles entirely out of post-consumer waste. Co-developed by Austrian recycling technology specialist EREMA and SIPA, a world leader in PET preform and bottle production systems from Italy, the XTREME produces bottles that are suitable for food contact and with properties as good as those of bottles produced from virgin PET, directly from flakes of post-consumer scrap, in a single heat cycle.

EREMA and SIPA were acknowledged with a WorldStar Packaging Award for this innovative system during the gala ceremony hosted by the World Packaging Organisation (WPO) in Prague, Czech Republic on May 15. The WPO presents World Star Packaging Awards every year to what are considered by independent experts to be the best packaging solutions and applied technological innovations.

(Photo: SIPA)

XTREME Renew first went into commercial operation in late 2018: EREMA and SIPA collaborated with two Japanese partners – also cited for the award – Kyoei Industry (a major recycling company) and Suntory (one of the largest beverage producers in the world) on an installation in Kasama in Japan. The system can produce over 300 million containers per year.

EREMA technology converts conventional washed bottle flakes into decontaminated melt-filtered PET food-grade melt with an increased viscosity (IV), which then is directly fed to a SIPA XTREME injection-compression preform molding plant (unlike other molding systems on the market that have to start from pelletized material called RPET). Containers produced from the preforms boast a high level of aesthetics, thanks to the elimination of an entire melting process that could otherwise cause yellowing in the resin.

“This is a solution that represents the perfect response to the requirements of the new circular economy,” says Gianfranco Zoppas, President of SIPA parent company Zoppas Industries. “Waste reprocessing is rendered sustainable and economical while producing new products of the highest quality. This innovative technology uses 30% less electricity than traditional recycling processes, thanks largely to systems integration, while CO₂ emissions are cut by 25% – a massive 60% when you compare it to bottle production from virgin resin.

"I am particularly honored that this Austro-Italian green technology has received important international recognition. It has already had such a success in Japan that our partners there are even now thinking of two additional installations that will triple the production capacity to up to almost a billion rPET bottles per year."