Recycled Polymers Ltd is a newly formed company from Birmingham in the UK and it is going to be using specialist material to recycle industrial plastics that have gone to waste. The company have said that there is a granulation process which creates pellet products that can be used for moulding new plastics.
Recycled Polymers has invested over £750,000 in this new venture which includes a special machine which has been constructed in Taiwan. This is all housed in a new facility which is over 1000 square metres in size.
Funding for the project has come from several of the company’s directors including the managing director, Grant Gerry. Asset finance has also been provided by HSBC. It is expected that this new venture is going to be recycling a wide range of plastics including high-density polyethylene and ABS.
It is expected that when compared to older equipment this new machinery is going to use up to 60 percent less energy and is also going to be a clean and fast operation. Mr Gerry has stated that the savings in energy will be passed on to the price of the product they are outputting. Recycled Polymers have already said they have several major contracts to recycled plastic waste from industry users.
Andrew Selby, is an entrepreneur who is helping to mentor the business and he has proven so successful in business having sold numerous companies over the last 40 years. He commented, “We know there is an urgent need for efficient plastic recycling companies and we want to expand rapidly to meet this need.”
The machinery the plant is using has been designed in the UK and has been manufactured in Taiwan. The machine is capable of processing a large amount of plastic into special pellets which can then be used for extrusion and injection moulding. The compounding process that the machine is using is very similar to current injection moulding as additives and plastics are put into a hopper at the end of the barrel.
The recycled material is then transported along the length of this barrel and will be melted by a sheet which would be compounded into plastic. Fillers and additives are added in the process and eventually the melted plastic comes through a screen that filters out any contaminants. From there it is put onto a plate that allows any volatile material to be removed. Eventually it is cut into pellets which are cooled in water and then transferred for packaging.
The finished product looks like a black pellet and it is sold back to the companies which it comes from. Initially it was regarded as waste by them but it is returned to them as a usable product. Most of these products are then used to create things such as DVD cases, water butts, coathangers, water pipes and drain covers. The company stated that it is possible that all of these products, and more, can eventually be made from entirely recycled material and nothing raw.
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