Chemical company Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL) in Thailand has partnered with Evertis, a producer of mono and multilayer semi rigid barrier films on the development of a PET fim suitable for use in food packaging trays based of recycled PET flakes.
As the most recycled plastic in the world today, PET is driving sustainable growth due to its recyclable, flexible, safe and lightweight properties.
Indorama spent six years working on the development of rPET flakes from post-consumer PET food trays and is currently able to commercially produce these at their Verdun facility in France. The flakes are sold under Indorama’s Deja brand - its umbrella brand for sustainable high performance products with a reduce dimpact on the environment.
The flake are comparable in quality to flakes derived from bottles, thus enlarging the availability of available rPET flakes for packaging producers, who are striving to meet their recycled content targets.
“PET trays are crucial to provide safety and convenience to consumers, ensuring longer shelf life for food and reducing waste. For some time, our industry has had a goal to create circular solutions for these essential products,” said Marta Matos Gil, Chief Sustainability Officer at Evertis.
Currently the films produced by Evertis target an average incorporation of 50% recycled content. Partnering with Indorama Ventures will may more possible as well as help Evertis to meet its sustainability goals. Plus, the recycling technology developed by Indorama will contribute to the nascent tray-to-tray recycling stream. “We can create a truly circular economy by developing infrastructure and capacity to collect, sort and recycle PET trays and transform them back into valuable raw material. This is crucial in the current market, where our clients face new packaging regulations and consumers are concerned about the environmental impact of the products they buy,” she explained.
Indorama said the new recycling technology had the potential to divert more than 50 million post-consumer PET trays from landfill or incineration each year, based on annual capacity, and support the EU’s plastic collection and recycling targets.