This ground-breaking project has shown that a food grade recycled PP resin derived from post-consumer sources can be achieved using a patented process. The resulting material can be used at 100% levels in contact with food.

Nextek was commissioned by WRAP to work in partnership with the UK packaging supply chain, retailers, brand owners and the recycling industry to develop a viable process to recycle household Polypropylene (PP) packaging waste into recycled PP (rPP) approved for use in the manufacture of food packaging.

Focus was on developing a recycling process that could increase the decontamination performance to the standards required by EU regulations for food contact and that could cope with a wide range of PP packaging materials encountered in the post-consumer PP packaging stream.

Recycling a wide range of mixed rigid post-consumer PP packaging to food contact quality is more complex than the recycling of HDPE and PET bottles. Nextek approached this challenge by identifying and selecting a process that provides a high level of melt-phase decontamination in an extruder with a specially designed vacuum section that provides a large surface area for removal of volatile contaminants, followed by treatment in a heated high-vacuum degassing reactor.

This project demonstrates the development of full scale processes that can expand the recycling of plastic packaging to include rigid PP packaging along with HDPE and PET packaging in a closed loop system. Retailers and brand owners have supported the development of this technology because it has direct environmental benefits such as lower carbon footprint packaging, resource efficiency and diversion of packaging waste from landfill.

Further investigations by Nextek are focusing on improved automated sorting and separation of PP food packs from packs previously in contact with non-food substances. Nextek is now running large scale rPP trials and working with a number of packaging manufacturers to trial turning rPP resins into a variety of moulded and thermoformed pots, tubs and trays.

Working with industry partners Nextek has developed an alternative colour system that maintains the integrity of black packaging but can still be identified and separated. This has the potential to save 30,000 tonnes of packaging from landfill.

This ground-breaking project aims to facilitate the development of technical solutions for the recovery and recycling of rigid black plastic packaging from a mixed plastic waste stream. The R&D project was commissioned by WRAP and focuses on delivering environmental benefits over existing waste management options.

 Common black pigments cannot be sorted by most Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) and Plastics Recovery Facilities (PRFs). The key objective is for these alternative colourant techniques to allow recyclers to sort black packaging in existing mixed plastics sorting facilities.

A small number of colourants were selected in order to evaluate these key principles, which will be equally applicable to all suppliers.

The results show the economic benefits arising from the recycling of up to an estimated 60,000 tpa of black plastic  that could include electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), automotive and building/construction industries. A range of detectable black colourants are now available that allow the automatic detection and recovery of these materials to be reused as substitutes for virgin plastics avoiding landfill.

Closing the loop by recycling milk bottles back into milk bottles provides recyclers with additional commercial benefits, brand owners with sustainable packaging and consumers with improved environmental outcomes.

Technology for closed loop recycling of post-consumer HDPE has been developed by Nextek as part of a WRAP funded project in 2005, and has now been commercialised in the UK.

This ‘super cleaning’ process produces pelletised rHDPE approved for food contact applications. This reduces our reliance on virgin HDPE and has significant environmental benefits.

The technology uses a process and equipment similar to what has previously been used for food grade rPET and is well suited to operating in a current food grade rPET plant as a second stream of material.

The UK commenced using rHDPE at 10% addition rates and has since moved to 15% in an industry wide initiative. Targeting 30% addition rates by 2015 the recovery level and closed loop recycling of milk bottles has continued to grow in the UK to meet the increased demand of this now valuable commodity.

Nextek continues to develop and expand this new technology in many other countries providing new opportunities and improved sustainability outcomes for business and the community.

Nextek has also completed work on Australia’s first food grade rHDPE plant in Sydney Australia. This plant was designed by Nextek to produce high quality food grade rHDPE and food grade rPET to optimise the value of the in-feed material.