Philadelphia — Miners needed picks and shovels to find gold, but Krauss-Maffei Corp. is doing the same with extruders.
"There's a gold rush going on in recycling," extrusion expert Paul Martin said March 5 at Antec 2025 in Philadelphia. "A lot of new technology is leading to a lot of opportunity."
The recycling rush is a result of global concerns over plastics waste. This in turn is leading to higher interest in using extruders to produce recycled content materials.
"Technology is coming on fast and it's getting better and better," Martin said. In mechanical recycling, he cited improvements in infrared sorting, AI-powered tools, spectroscopy tools for detecting polymer types and new color and density separation systems.
Recyclers also now have improved washing systems, solvent-based purification and tracking systems for polymer life cycles, Martin said. AI is increasingly being used to optimize recycling plant operations and to reduce waste, he added.
The recycling rush has led to increased interest in modular extrusion systems made by Krauss-Maffei. "To go from a solid to a melt, you need an extruder," Martin said. "That's why we're heavy into recycling."
Advanced auxiliary systems are needed to handle recyclate, while advanced pelletizing equipment can supply uniform pellet shape. Stabilizers also can be used to improve polymer durability during reprocessing.
Martin also distinguished between mechanical recycling, which he said "keeps the molecule intact" and chemical recycling, which "changes or rearranges the molecule."
Krauss-Maffei also is seeing higher interest in lab-scale recycling systems for R&D, as well as in equipment for testing the properties of recycled polymers.
Krauss-Maffei Corp. is based in Florence, Ky. It's the North American unit of global plastics machinery supplier KraussMaffei Group of Parsdorf, Germany. KraussMaffei is majority owned by China National Chemical Equipment, a unit of Chinese materials firm Sinochem.