Food-grade plastics recycling facility installed in India

The well-established Indian recycler commissioned a PET bottle-to-bottle and a post-consumer polyolefin recycling line from Starlinger in mid-September.

With the new lines Srichakra Polyplast upgraded its facilities and now offers the highest grades of recycled plastics to customers in India and international markets such as Europe and the United States.

Srichakra Polyplast is a leading plastic recycling and waste management company based in Hyderabad. The company has invested US$10 million (€8.6 million) for upgrading and expanding its plastics recycling capabilities and has chosen Starlinger as its machine supplier. The new recoSTAR PET 165 iV+ is the first of its kind Starlinger has installed in India. It features US FDA-approved technology for processing post-consumer PET bottle flakes. The produced rPET pellets are suitable for food-contact and can be used for food and beverage packaging like bottles for water and carbonated soft drinks, food trays, etc. With this technology upgrade Srichakra is now able to provide premium food-grade quality rPET for food packaging to the Indian and international markets.

Starlinger recycling equipment has proven its high decontamination capability in a series of challenges tests. The rPET produced on Starlinger recycling machinery can be used at a rate of up to 100 % for direct food-contact packaging. Due to a variety of input qualities and requirements in terms of reapplication, Starlinger recycling technology has designed four approaches to achieve food-contact rPET. Although all four systems have achieved various food-contact approvals, they differ in rate of decontamination, brand-owner approval, AA level and IV increase. Preferred solution for bottle-to-bottle is the well proven recoSTAR PET iV+ line.