• New recycling systems, new services, new applications

November, 15, 2022 - This year's K focused on the topics of digitalisation, climate protection and the circular economy. The Erema Group showcased its solutions at its own trade fair stand, which exhibited all the companies within the group and their products, and at the VDMA Circular Economy Forum in the outdoor area.

"Our mission 'Another life for plastic, because we care', is also our tagline at this year's trade fair. This underlines what the Erema group of companies showed to plastics industry insiders and all other visitors to the trade fair: that technical progress and working together make it possible to implement a circular economy," said Manfred Hackl, CEO Erema Group GmbH.

Synergies within the group promote new developments

In Düsseldorf, the companies in the Erema Group - which are Erema, Pure Loop, Umac, 3S, Keycycle and Plasmac - presented their technological innovations, services and support at one common stand for the first time. The latest addition, start-up Plasticpreneur, in which the Erema Group recently acquired a stake, was also present in the outdoor area.

The focus of the group's trade show presentation was on new recycling systems and components to meet a wide range of customer needs and quality specifications. Erema introduced EcoGentle, a new plasticising technology for its PET recycling systems that reduces energy consumption and features gentle treatment of the melt, the company claims. For particularly challenging post consumer materials such as supermarket packaging films, the recycling machine manufacturer launched its Intarema TVEplus technology in a new DuaFil Compact configuration. Erema says that its compact double filtration machine produces double-filtered, fine quality recycled pellets. Another new machine concept, which is ready for use as a demo unit at the company's test centre in Austria, was presented: the PCU TwinScrew, a direct combination of its patented PreConditioning Unit (PCU) with a twin-screw extruder.

Erema's Powerfil business unit presented the new Laserfilter 406 with a 50 percent larger screen area, and at 3S - the manufacturing professional for extrusion key components - it was possible to see how this new type of cylinder enables ultrasonic wear measurements.

For customers looking for rapidly available recycling systems for simple applications, Erema Group subsidiary Umac had an innovation in store. While the company has so far specialised in refurbishing and trading in previously owned equipment, it is now expanding its business area and in Düsseldorf presented Readymac, a standardised, prefabricated recycling solution that can be produced from stock, based on Erema TVE technology.

For the inhouse recycling segment, Pure Loop and Plasmac rounds off the range of machines offered by the group of companies with their product portfolio. Both companies demonstrated live at the Erema Group stand the input streams which their systems are suitable for and the recycled pellets that they produce. The group subsidiary Keycycle provided information about a new deinking solution for recycling printed film. This enables printing ink to be removed in a process step upstream of extrusion.

"While we have much that is new in terms of hardware - we also have new software," says Manfred Hackl. This features additional digital assistance systems that are now available to machine operators on the BluPort customer platform. With the PredictON app, for example, imminent malfunctions can be detected based on continuous measurement and evaluation of machine data so that the cause can be remedied in good time, Erema claims.

Chemical recycling, fibre and textile recycling

The Erema Group also said they are investigating plastic waste streams for which there is currently no satisfactory recycling solution. "Chemarema is a new series we have developed for mechanical material processing as part of the chemical recycling process," says Hackl in introducing another Erema innovation. Mechanical processes are often at the beginning of the process chain for chemical recycling to prepare input streams and ensure a reliable, continuous and energy-efficient flow of feed material. According to Erema, Chemarema is an extrusion technology that can be adapted to the application requirements for preparing feed material for downstream chemical processes.

By combining existing recycling technologies featuring ultra-fine filtration systems with an additional IV optimiser, Erema says it now also offers a solution for turning PET fibre production waste into rPET fibres for higher-value end applications. The rPET can be used 100 percent in the production of ultra-fine fibres of up to 2 dtex. This is the result of development work at the company's newly established Fibre Recycling Centre, where customers can test their own fibre material.

Live recycling and lighthouse projects in the outdoor area

In the outdoor area at K, Erema this year again presented live demonstrations of plastics recycling in conjunction with cooperation partners. Different waste streams were processed for this purpose. Plasticpreneur, the latest member of the Erema group of companies, was there to demonstrate its mobile recycling solutions for entry-level access to plastics recycling. The wide variety of high-quality applications for recycled pellets were showcased in the "products made of recyclate" exhibition, ranging from technical components to consumer goods and food packaging.

Source: Erema