In-house processing helps Regenex Corp. grow

With a catalog of more than 300 products and parts – as well as custom extrusions – West Middlesex, Pennsylvania-based Regenex Corp. has become a leading extruder of recycled vinyl window parts.

“We founded the company with the belief that recycling was not only responsible but also made economic sense,” says Dan Berent, president of Regenex. “We were convinced that we could extrude high-quality products from recycled vinyl and at a fraction of the cost of virgin vinyl.”

In a few short years, strong growth mandated Regenex to incorporate new, higher volume recycling technologies in-house, which it did in 1999. In researching equipment suppliers, the company discovered ReTech, which soon thereafter was acquired by Vecoplan.

“We determined we needed a system that could process up to 3,000 pounds an hour. Our first equipment – an RG52/100 – could handle that, and then some,” Berent adds. Shortly thereafter in 2000, the company expanded operations into Illinois and in 2009 traded in that original RG52/100 for an RG52/100 U-XL shredder-granulator system to recycle vinyl window scrap at its Illinois facility.  

Equipment performance has contributed to the company’s growth and expansion into a new market: vinyl seawalls, a permanent, high-quality solution for protecting coastal land from erosion and is significantly less costly that steel sheet, wood or concrete.

In 2008, Regenex merged the country’s oldest supplier of vinyl seawalls into its operations and in 2019 installed another RG52/100U-XL in a Florida factory to process scrap from the seawall extrusion operation based there. Demand had also required the company to expand capacity at its Pennsylvania facility, thus adding in 2018 a VAZ1300 M-XL unit coupled with a 75-horsepower grinder to process thick, heavy seawall scrap.

“We’re processing between 1.2 and 1.7 million pounds of vinyl scrap each month, and using all of it internally,” Berent says. “Our main line in Pennsylvania runs 24 hours, six days a week. It’s critical to our operations that our shredder/grinder equipment is reliable, durable and assures quality in our extruded products. We made the right decision to process vinyl scrap in-house. It’s one of the best investments we’ve made.”