APK announces plans to build plastic recycling plants in Asia and Europe

APK Aluminium und Kunststoffe AG, a manufacturer of plastics, plastic mixtures and compounds made of pre- and postconsumer plastic scrap that is headquartered in Merseburg, Germany, says it plans to establish five recycling plants by 2025 together with strategic partners in Europe and Southeast Asia to strengthen plastics recycling and to reduce global pollution and marine litter.

According to a study by the London-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation, worldwide plastics production has reached more than 300 million tonnes per year and is still increasing. Roughly 78 million tonnes per year of single-use plastic packaging are produced, much of which ends up in incineration or landfills, or even worse, in the oceans of our planet. Less than 17% of all plastic material is currently recycled worldwide—this low number is because of the lack of efficient collection and sorting systems and the lack of advanced recycling technology in some regions, the report notes.

APK says it has developed technology that can be applied to a broad variety of plastic types and combinations commonly used in packaging, even difficult ones including multilayer films. The technology exploits physical and chemical properties of different polymer types to separate these efficiently, resulting in high-purity single-polymer streams, the company claims.

CEO Klaus Wohnig explained at Interpack 2017, 4-10 May in Dusseldorf, Germany, why it is important to set up plants in Europe and Asia: “In Germany we have developed an advanced and economically interesting recycling technology to recover virgin-quality polymers from plastic packaging waste. We call it Newcycling. We now want to expand in Europe while simultaneously bringing our technology to the region where the problem is acute: Southeast Asia. Of course, we are open to further co-operations with interested industry partners in order to change the plastics economy from linear to truly circular as soon as possible. This challenge is a very substantial.”

APK Aluminium und Kunststoffe AG was founded in 2008 and has a 57-square-metre plant near Leipzig, Germany. APK has expertise and patented technology in mechanical and physical-chemical recycling of a variety of feedstocks. APK is owned by Munich-based financial investors MIG Fonds (http://www.mig-fonds.de/) and AT Newtec.