read while there early this month. One man hoping to capitalize on the surging interest in plastics recycling is Randeep Gampa, who last June started a business, Spearepet (Hyderabad), with commercial operations beginning last November.

Gamopa told MPW during the Plastindia show in early February that he’d acquired a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling unit from Austrian machinery manufacturer Erema (Ansfelden, Austria). “People are very keen to know about recycled PET (R-PET),” he said during the trade show, the first event for his company.

His firm supplies the domestic processing market with pellets suitable for blowmolding, as well as with sheet extruded from R-PET. Because, he said, interest in R-PET is high but questions about the material’s suitability (with regard to appearance of products made from it, as well as food-contact approval) abound. His company even has done some thermoforming of sheet made from the R-PET, “so customers can see the quality of the R-PET products,” he said. —[email protected]