Many plastic packaging production processes produce some amount of plastic waste. The two primary forms of waste are product rejects, products that don’t meet technical or quality specifications and product scrap, such as the trimmings produced when sizing a plastic product by cutting away the edges.

In a typical plastic food packaging production environment, the amount of waste produced can be considerable. The least cost and highest value recycling opportunity available to brand managers, packaging manufacturers and to society as a whole, is to reprocess this waste directly back into the plastic production process using a plastic reprocessing machine.

One example of the successful use of a plastic reprocessing machine is EXXEL Polymers operating in Canada and the US. EXXEL Polymers reprocesses a wide variety of plastic input materials from a multitude of post-industrial supply streams to make high-quality plastic pellets.

The EXXEL Polymers Team!

Using EREMA plastic reprocessing machines, they reprocess more than 11,000 tons of post-industrial plastic waste a year. The input plastics to be reprocessed are tested in their lab so that plastic waste is grouped as it’s reprocessed in order to provide the highest quality reprocessed plastic pellets for manufacture of new products. 

The EXXEL Polymers Plastics Reprocessing Lab

“We process all types of material. And to do so we need a flexible recycling technology which enables us to switch for example from regrind to film/sheet or materials with MFI values ranging from low to high,” explains Éric Fradette, President at EXXEL POLYMERS, “plus the system has to be able to remove any dust and moisture inside the input material.”

EXXEL Polymers Reprocesses a Wide Range of Plastics

The company has been using an EREMA 1109 TVEplus^® plastic reprocessing machine for years and with continuous expansion has purchased a new INTAREMA^® 1309 TVEplus^® with Laserfilter. 

 These systems are able to reprocess a wide range of plastics and the plastics that they reprocess include HDPE (high density polyethylene), PS (polystyrene) and PP (polypropylene). 

EXXEL Polymers EREMA 1109 TVEplus^® Plastic Reprocessing Machine

“We process all types of material. And to do so we need a flexible recycling technology which enables us to switch for example from regrind to film/sheet or materials with MFI values ranging from low to high plus the system has to be able to remove any dust and moisture inside the input material. There are so many different types of plastic on the market – and this is precisely the challenge!”

The patented extruder system INTAREMA^® TVEplus^® sets new standards in the recycling of materials that are difficult to process such as heavily printed films and/or very moist materials. This is made possible through ultra-fine filtration, thorough melt homogenization and high-performance degassing in a single step.

The proven basic principle of TVEplus^® technology: melt filtration takes place upstream of extruder degassing. As a result, end products can be produced with the best quality and the highest possible recyclate content.

To learn more about EREMA INTAREMA® TVEplus^®, go here.