According to its own information, the mechanical engineering company Starlinger und Co. GmbH has received two Letters of No Objection (LNO) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a newly developed machine concept for HDPE post-consumer waste. Specifically, this involves HDPE bottle-to-bottle and HDPE cap-to-cap recycling processes. This means that the HDPE regranulate produced by these processes may be used for food contact packaging. According to Paul Niedl, commercial manager of Starlinger recycling technology, there is great interest for this on the market. In addition to a degassing module, the machine concept includes downstream odor removal technology, which Niedl says ensures that even deeply embedded odors are removed. Niedl sees a broad field of application for packaging such as milk and juice bottles, bottle caps as well as food trays for meat, which are made from HDPE, where millions of tons of virgin HDPE could be saved in the future.

Sources:

• recyclingmagazin.de (10/20/2021)
• Photo: @ Starlinger