Coperion is building a new recycling test lab at its Niederbiegen/Weingarten, Germany, production facility, the company has announced. The Recycling Innovation Center will be sited in the immediate vicinity of Coperion’s existing test centre for Bulk Solids Handling, expanding the company’s test lab capacities in Germany alone up to 5,000 m².
The decision to invest in the new lab was motivated by the increasing importance of recycling in the industry today. And, said Markus Parzer, president of the Polymer Division and managing director of Coperion, this will only continue to grow in the years to come, driven by the ‘constantly increasing demands of environmental legislation, such as that within the framework of the European Green New Deal, and due to changing consumer behaviour and environmental consciousness’.
As demand for efficient plastics recycling solutions steadily expands, Coperion, which already manufactures a wide range equipment and processes for recycling applications, has opted to respond by also offering customers tangible support in the form of a dedicated test lab. Here, concrete approaches to solutions for every recycling process stage will be tested and developed, together with customers from all over the world
At the new Recycling Innovation Centre, customers will be able to draw on the expertise available at Coperion develop and test new, sustainable products and recycling processes. The facility will be fully equipped to handle all the essential stages of the recycling process stages including materials conveying, feeding, extrusion, pelletising, and materials post processing. Next to meeting customers’ needs, the facilities available at the Centre will enable Coperion to further its own research into plastics recycling.
Markus Parzer explained that, in deciding to create this new Recycling Innovation Center, Coperion has set clear priorities to be an active partner with its customers, ‘working with them along the path toward greater sustainability and a functioning circular economy’.
The new lab, added Bernd Neumann, Coperion Weingarten and Niederbiegen site manager, will offer ‘added value for our customers in the plastics industry’, as well as opening up new long-term career opportunities for those in the region.
As plastics treatment and processing operations around the world seek to address the question of how recycling can be implemented, practically and at an industrial scale, with this state-of-the-art test lab, we are offering our customers a top-tier solution for developing their processes and products, said Marina Matta, team leader of Process Technology Engineering Plastics at Coperion.
Coperion is the global market and technology leader in compounding systems, feed systems, bulk goods systems, and services.The company employs 2,500 people worldwide in its two divisions: Polymer and Strategic Markets and Aftermarket Sales and Service, as well as its 30 sales and service companies.