For the Erema Group, financial year 2019/20, which ended on 31 March, was one for the books: for the first time in its history, the Group generated a consolidated total turnover of more than EUR 200 million - a more than 10% increase over 2018/19.
Manfred Hackl, CEO of the Group, chalked the results up to numerous factors, including the diversity of technologies and innovation-oriented approach shown by the subsidiary companies in the Group.
As he noted: "These enable us to serve a range of recycling markets and to implement tailor-made recycling solutions for our customers.”
Among the new products launched over the past year were the Intarema ZeroWastePro system, specifically designed to recycle; and Pure Loop’s new ISEC evo shredder-extrusion series for production scrap, which enables output rates of more than 1,500 kg/h to be achieved for the first time.
In addition, the recycling of contaminated plastic waste into quality resins received a boost when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the PCR-HDPE produced using the Intarema TVEplus RegrindPro extrusion system combined with the ReFresher module for food contact applications. The company’s newly introduced Vacunite bottle-to-bottle recycling system is also already being commissioned by the first customers.
The advantages of the digital assistance systems developed by Erema became clear during the recent lockdown. Provided through the BluPort customer platform, they enabled the company to provide remote support on during commissioning and service job.
“Spare parts can be ordered around the clock from our Spare Parts Online shop, where there are also detailed instruction videos that enable machine operators to carry out maintenance work on their own," Michael Heitzinger, managing director, EREMA GmbH, added.
The Group is looking towards the future with confidence over the long term, even though recent developments have led to a very tense situation for plastics recyclers. Erema sees sustainability and plastics recycling as continuing to be important issues for society and industry, possibly even gaining in significance as a result of the lessons learned from this crisis.
"The demand for our machines shows that recycling is becoming increasingly important in the value chain. With our technologies and services, we ensure stable recycling processes and high-quality recycled pellets even with challenging input materials. That is how we are creating a very important prerequisite for the plastics circular economy," said CEO Manfred Hackl.
With the current economic impact of the Coronavirus crisis on the recycling industry, decision-makers at national and international level must ensure that recycling know-how and established recycling systems built over the years are maintained and further developed to meet EU recycling targets.