Engel was among the winners of this year’s inaugural Upper Austrian Environmental Award, the company has announced. The award, launched this year by the state of Upper Austria as a ‘climate challenge’ under the slogan ‘A better idea, a step forward’, drew some 60 entries in total. Five winners were ultimately selected out of a lineup of 12 finalists, ranging from student start-ups to major companies, and a broad diversity of submitted ideas.
Engel was recognised for its skinmelt technology, a process that is used to create sandwich products. Unlike in traditional coinjection moulding, in this process the two melts are layered even before they are injected in sequence into the main injection cylinder. The skin – the virgin material – reaches the cavity first. It is displaced by the subsequent stream of recycled material and pressed against the cavity wall. The recycled material then fills the core. The proportion of recycled material that can be achieved is largely determined by the part geometry and the cavity filling pattern, said Engel. The process allows higher proportions of recycled material than other sandwich processes.
“Plastics are valuable raw materials," said Günther Klammer, Vice President Recycling at ENGEL, headquartered in Schwertberg. ”We develop technologies that enable recycled materials to be processed for an increasingly wide range of applications and increasingly high-quality products."