EREMA North America (ENA) sales growth reached almost 50%. A primary driver of North American growth is the growing PET recycling market due to EREMA’s leadership role in producing efficient PET recycling technology that can recover high quality PET across many applications. There are numerous challenges with recycling PET and EREMA has engineered the most advanced PET recycling technologies to address these challenges.
The proven VACUREMA technology enables energy-efficient decontamination of flakes and VACUNITE combines this decontamination process before the melt with vacuum-assisted nitrogen SSP.
"In order to meet the PET recycling targets of the food and beverage brands, an enormous increase in recycling capacities is necessary and EREMA has the appropriate technical solutions," declares Martin Baumann, VP Sales of ENA. A VACUREMA® bottle-to-bottle line with a capacity of 6,000 lbs/hr was shipped just a few days ago. Numerous other projects are already in the pipeline, including the world's largest PET recycling plant with a capacity of around 17,650 lbs/hr that is to be commissioned in Mexico in about a year's time.
Innovation leader in PET recycling
"Our VACUREMA® process, which removes moisture and migration materials from the flakes before the melt, is still the fastest and most energy-saving method for producing food-grade rPET pellets," explains Martin Baumann, adding: "This technology is therefore also the basis for ongoing application-specific developments with the aim of combining process steps and further increasing quality." In the recent past, these developments include the Flakes to Preforms XTREME Renew system developed jointly with SIPA, with which preforms can be produced directly from PET flakes in just one process step, and the new VACUNITE bottle-to-bottle process launched just a few months ago.
Great demand for the new VACUNITE technology
This world first in PET recycling combines the proven VACUREMA® technology with newly patented, vacuum-assisted solid state polycondensation (SSP). The result is a unique quality of rPET pellets that far exceed the legal requirements for food contact as well as the usually even stricter requirements of the major beverage brands. VACUNITE delivers highly efficient decontamination, compact design and low energy consumption. "Demand is high. Three VACUNITE systems have already been sold in the short time since the first presentation at the end of 2018, and the first concrete projects are also in the offing in the USA," says Baumann, pleased that EREMA has once again been able to demonstrate its role as an innovation leader in PET recycling with this technology.
To see demonstration videos of advanced PET and Film recycling technology, click here.
To learn more about Advanced PET Recycling Technology visit our guide here.
