This advancement from EQP takes the world closer to closing the loop in the circular economy, helping brand owners to meet the guidelines of the European Plastic Strategy while driving an increase in plastics recycling.
"EQP's mission is to be a leader for sustainable development and growth worldwide," said Ramesh Ramachandran, President & CEO of EQUATE. "The Equate Group's Board of Directors is fully supportive of the EQP initiative to be a pioneer in bringing sustainable solutions to the plastics industry."
The manufacturing of Viridis 25 is based on a chemical recycling process of PET polymers coming from post-consumer flakes. In 2009 EQP launched Viridis 10, a PET grade containing up to 10% recycled PET. In 2016 EQP and Coca-Cola started collaborating on Viridis 25. The process has been successfully validated and is now being transferred onto an industrial scale. It will be manufactured initially in Schkopau, Germany where EQP is improving the plant capability to replace fossil feedstock with rPET.
At maturity, the consumption of rPET for Viridis 25 will exceed 30 KMT/year. Viridis 25 complies with the relevant European regulations for food contact plastics and can be used in the beverage bottle production as well as in thermoforming applications.
Fast Facts:
- The total post-consumer PET collection in EU is around 2.000 Ktons (2 million tons) per year (2016 data).
- rPET flakes reach 1.3 million mt/year out of this quantity.
- Viridis 25 will require >3% of total rPET available in Europe.
- The current Equipolymers production capacity of PET is about 350.000 metric tons/year: about 10% of total PET capacity in Europe.
