Industrial packaging provider The Mauser Group said that the new recycling center operated by its reconditioning subsidiary National Container Group (NCG) is full lifecycle management at its best. By opening this new plastic recycling center in Erkelenz, Germany, Mauser/NCG further believes it now offers full lifecycle services to its customers.

"Responsible material recycling in addition to a comprehensive service portfolio in recollection and reconditioning of rigid industrial packaging further underlines the company's ambition to be a market leader in sustainable industrial packaging," the comapny stated. 

As part of its global network of more than 25 reconditioning sites, NCG in Europe offers a broad service portfolio of collection, laundry, washing and remanufacturing of used composite IBC and drums from 10 locations all over Europe. With its latest 2.5 million Euro investment in this new plastic recycling center in Erkelenz, Germany, Mauser/NCG now takes the next step into complete lifecycle management of industrial packaging and packaging materials. The recycling line reportedly generates high quality recycled polyethylene material from used industrial plastic packaging and IBC bottles at an annual capacity of 3.500 ton.

"With the growth of our European network and the expansion of our service portfolio into reconditioning of plastic packaging, we saw the need to take a look at responsible material recycling of plastic packaging no longer suitable for reconditioning," said Ernest van den Boogerd, managing director of NCG, Europe, in a news release. "Industrial plastics packaging mainly is produced from low melt flow polyethylene materials and during its phase of use often comes in contact with various chemicals. Its material recycling process needs specific attention and equipment that we could not find when looking at existing recycling capabilities in the European market. Therefore, we took the decision to set up our own recycling line. Plastic packaging materials no longer suitable for reuse are sorted and graded in terms of quality in each NCG location before being sent as cut, bailed and pre-cleaned material to our new European recycling center in Erkelenz. Knowing the history of our materials is essential for generating high quality recycled plastics."

Bernhard Heisel, specialist for recycled plastics at NCG, said that the setup of the group's recycling line is "highly flexible." After shredding and wet grinding the plastic material is cleaned in two separate friction washers, which can be operated in series at various temperatures and with water or caustic soda. Following an extensive drying process, they are able to separate cleaned grinded materials.

"To further improve the quality of our recycling materials the washing process is followed by an extrusion process," he said. "In the extruder, melted materials pass two vacuum degasing zones to reduce migrated contaminations significantly, which could not be taken out during the washing process. Operating materials at low melt flow of 2 to 10 (MFI 21.5) without material degradation is quite special for our recycling setup."

 The collection, sorting, processing and quality control fully comply to the requirements lined out in DIN EN ISO 16103:2005 on "Transport packaging for dangerous goods - Recycled plastics material," which makes the materials the "perfect basis for new industrial packaging made from recycled plastics."