25/05/16
PETCORE Europe Thermoforms: Collection is key
London, 16 May (Argus) — Ahead of the Petcore Europe Thermoforms Conference in
Dijon, France on 27-28 May, the technical manager of Petcore Europe's
thermoforming working group, Jose-Antonio Alarcon, spoke to Argus about progress
in the European tray-to-tray recycling market. Since we attended the annual
event last year in Granada, Spain what has changed for the market? We don't see
big changes. Collection is mostly the same, but there have been some
developments on recycling projects. The appetite for recycling of tray-to-tray
is growing. We have seen more players coming to operate in the tray-to-tray
market over the last year, and more capacity is expected to start during this
year. Petcore are aiming to make an study of the state of play for the
thermoform industry in Europe to have a clear view on the real market size and
the final application usage. The distribution between the food contact and
non-food contacts, and also between mono and multi-layer, are essential for us
and will be discussed in France. Following on from the success of last year's
conference, what topics and discussions are you hoping will come up at this
year's event? We want to keep energising the market, and building on the
momentum. We have five pillars in the thermoforming working group that will be
represented at the conference supporting the initiatives in the market. The
first one is collection and sorting. If the material is not collected, it is not
sorted, it is not recycled, period. We will be visiting a state-of-the-art
sorting centre where they separate bottles and trays into mono- and multi-layer
streams. The main challenge is how can these best practices be expanded to the
rest of Europe. The second is recycling technologies. This is important, because
you cannot use the same technologies for recycling bottle and trays because the
physical properties of trays are not the same as bottles. Trays are often
thinner and more brittle, they generate more dust and need to be treated more
gently. Third is food contact, because we need to get the food contact trays
back and into the closed loop. The majority of tray packaging placed on the
market is in food contact applications, but there is not currently much progress
on separate tray collection. There is work to be done in that direction. Then we
have design for recycling and standardisation. If you don't design properly for
recycling, then it will be very difficult for the market to scale up. And lastly
is communication. Consumers need to know that trays can be recycled just like
bottles, and we need people engaged. We also have presentations from the
European Commission and legislative specialists as this is an important factor
in the outlook for the market. Last year there was no specific legislation
dedicated to thermoforms. Now we have the Packaging and Packaging Waste
Regulation (PPWR) that passed into legislation and has mandated recycle content
targets. So is this a positive? There are some positives and negatives. Yes, in
the PPWR there is mandated recycled content targets for contact sensitive and
non-contact sensitive packaging that will directly impact the tray market. Of
course, this should move more people toward the use of tray flake and towards
separate collection for tray. One of the impacts of legislation is that a lot of
countries are moving to deposit return scheme (DRS) collection on bottles, which
is deducting a lot of bottle from the regular yellow bin collection. So there
will be a higher proportion of tray coming from this collection which could be a
good opportunity for the circularity of trays if this waste is managed properly.
And the recycled content targets should give a demand boost to the tray-to-tray
market. We also have recycled content targets into bottles from the Single Use
Plastics Directive (SUPD) meaning more and more bottle flakes are going back to
bottles so that's a good opportunity for tray flakes. PPWR targets 30pc recycled
content for contact sensitive packaging and 35pc for non-contact sensitive
packaging by 2030. Will Europe be able to reach these targets in the tray
market? It could, and it is possible, but it is ambitious. At this time, we are
a long way from that point on tray-to-tray and it is very complicated. If we
look to the bottle market, these percentages are achievable. Around 70pc of
bottles are collected on average in Europe, but less than 30pc of trays. If we
achieve similar collection volumes for trays then around 30pc recycled content
should be feasible. But it will be challenging. At the moment bottle flake
prices are at a significant premium to the virgin PET, which is impacting demand
particularly in thermoforming applications and other cost saving markets like
strapping and fibre. What impact could this have for PET tray flakes? People try
to minimise their impact on the balance sheet, bottom line so less competitive
prices versus virgin for rPET bottle flakes and pellets could spur more interest
in tray. And maybe with the additional demand for bottle flake or food grade
pellets from legislation and recycled content targets, people are looking for an
alternative source so that they're not having to compete with that bottle flake
market. But for PETCORE the focus is not on cost, our intention is that every
package place on the market is collected, sorted and recycled. Over the last 12
months, we've seen quite a few chemical recycling projects being delayed or
deferred. Is the difficult business environment across the whole industry an
additional challenge for scaling up tray-to-tray? Of course there are
challenges. We need to look at how the bottle recycling market has changed in
the past 15 years with collection, technology, volume, quality, capacity etc.,
and the tray market is much later in the in the evolution, so it will take some
time in order to achieve a similar situation as the bottle market. Of course, we
expect that the speed of acceleration to reach the point of maturity to be
faster for trays because we can take some learnings from previous experiences.
Five years ago, trays were considered a contaminant at bottle sorting plants,
and what we see today is that trays have the possibility to be a properly
recycled stream providing another outlet of waste for sorters and recyclers. We
need the material to be collected and it will require investment of course. The
current infrastructure may be sufficient if managed properly. To increase the
number of streams collected and volumes there may not be the need to invest in
new infrastructure but just to boost current infrastructures. Chemical recycling
is also part of the picture. There is a place for everyone, and mechanical and
chemical are absolutely complementary. At the end of the day, we need to try to
recover as much material as possible, then minimise the use of virgin resources
so we know streams that can be as effective as possible. Send comments and
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