The Japanese-German injection moulding machine manufacturer Sumitomo (SHI) Demag has decided to be part of R-Cycle-Community (a trade association which represents plastics packaging manufacturers) to provide its expertise in thin-wall packaging and know-how in In-Mould-Labelling (IML) and Injection-Compression-Moulding (ICM). The concept of R-Cycle boosts technologies, allowing the recording of all recycling-relevant information from the production process in a standardized digital product passport. All this is applied to the packaging and it is made available to the recycling industry through a data platform.
Sumitomo (SHI) Demag is convinced that a broad collaboration within the whole value chain of plastic packaging will gain the biggest impact to transform the linear to a circular economy. Furthermore, the use of digital product passports can leverage benefits to many areas of our daily business. Digitalization is key for a circular economy and can transport the necessary transparency to the different process steps in the chain - regardless of whether for the more effective sortability of plastics in the recycling process or as an information carrier in the communication between different machine and processing operations in the context of Industry 4.0 applications.
Christoph Wynands, Product Manager for packaging machines at Sumitomo (SHI) Demag, explained:
As a specialist for thin-walled packaging in the food industry, most of the products manufactured on our machines are made of PP or HDPE and our customers want to significantly increase the recycled content in their products. In order to do this economically, they are particularly dependent on clean recyclate streams. Unfortunately, the corresponding approvals for the broad use of mechanical recycled polyolefins in the food sector are still lacking in Europe. Accordingly, we want to provide support here and see in R-Cycle a fantastic opportunity to improve the purity and quality of PP and HDPE recycling streams to such an extent that the necessary food approvals for the use of this recyclates can be achieved. Here, we want to contribute our expertise with technologies such as In-Mould-Labelling (IML) and Injection-Compression-Moulding (ICM) to generate convincing applications and make them available to all stakeholders in cross-industry projects. In this way, we will generate new knowledge to be able to competently consult and convince as many packaging manufacturers as possible.
