France Plastique Recyclage buys another PET recycling plant from Starlinger

18-Jun-09

Projecting a strong growth for bottle-to-bottle recycling in France, France Plastique Recyclage (FPR) has signed a new contract with Starlinger (Austria) for the purchase of recycling plant machinery to equip a newly erected recycling operation in Limay, Paris. FRP has chosen Starlinger's recoSTAR PET 165 iV+ HC recycling line and two viscoSTAR 120 solid stating reactors for an annual output of about 15,000 tons. The company's first recycling plant from Starlinger - a recoSTAR PET 165 iV+ and two viscoSTAR 75 lines for the extrusion/solid state polycondensation and decontamination of high grade pellets from recycled PET - began production in February 2008 in La-Neuve-Lyre. Starlinger's recycling machinery was selected due to its excellent decontamination performance and solid stating technology, as demonstrated in tests for French food safety certification, performed at the first plant and confirmed successful by the AFSSA (Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments). Further, the energy-saving process concept, shown by calculating the energy consumed per kg of R-PET produced, was another argument in favour of the Austrian machinery maker. FPR's new plant is scheduled to begin operation in mid-2009 with a projected capacity of approximately 40,000 tons of pellets from recycled PET. The plant will process bales of collected used PET bottles first by extrusion into high quality pellets, which will then be transformed by polycondensation into food-contact grade R-PET granulate.