Cyprus opens first plastics recycling plant

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades inaugurated the country’s first turn-key plastics recycling plant, equipped with machinery from German and Austrian suppliers Linder and Starlinger.
 
The plant, owned and operated by waste management company PPC Recycling, can process more than 10,000 tonnes per year of plastic waste into “high-quality recyclates”, according to PPC.
 
The facility can recycle post-consumer material of varying quality, from heavily contaminated post-consumer HDPE and LDPE waste to light and high-volume post-industrial stretch films, the company added.
 
The plant features a processing system developed by Germany’s Lindner to produce clean and high-quality flakes at a consistently high throughput for the downstream extruder.
 
The line combines a Lindner shredder Micromat 2000 and coordinated washing and drying components, explained Andreas Poullaides, CEO of PCC Waste Management.
 
These include a Floater pre-washer and a newly developed friction washer from the Twister series, as well as a “modern drying system” installed at the downstream stage.
 
A Linder water treatment facility will then clean the waste water and return it to the system in a closed-loop process.
 
For processing the shredded and washed LDPE and HDPE waste, Austrian recycling machinery supplier Starlinger has delivered a recoSTAR dynamic 145 C-VAC line to the plant.
 
The “economically attractive” line, which was launched during the K 2013 trade show, produces approximately a tonne of regranulate per hour.
 
The machine combines a C-VAC degassing module and continuous melt filter to dispose of residual contamination, air pockets and moisture that the film typically shows after the washing process.
 
With Cyprus having the second highest amount of waste per capita in the EU after Denmark, the new plant will be a step in the right direction towards EU recycling targets.
 
“This project is extremely important to us. It is only with the help of the private sector that we are able to meet the EU's stringent circular economy targets and our own environmental objectives,” said Costas Kadis, minister of agriculture, rural development and the environment.