POST-INDUSTRIAL RECYCLING | TECHNOLOGY
Benvic ups its game in PVC recycling
Compounding company Benvic has steadily grown its in-house recycling and compounding capabilities in PVC and other materials, particu- larly since it acquired French recycler Ereplast in 2018.
Initially the post-industrial and post-consumer
recyclate from Ereplast was used to offset and reduce the amounts of virgin material being compounded through Benvic’s main PVC plant in Chevigny, France. It says this was useful in supplementing in-house scrap from Benvic’s main PVC production areas and also in extend- ing synergies with Benvic’s other manufacturing sites in Poland, Italy, Spain and the UK. In 2020, Ereplast was responsible for producing more than 3,000 tonnes of PVC recyclate to distribute to all Benvic customers in Europe. Eric Grange, Benvic’s Product Marketing
Manager, says: “Our initial positioning involved a low-cost and low-performance approach by mixing all incoming recycling material.” But this very quickly changed as Benvic sought to integrate recyclate in compounds and maintain the polymer performance to be as good as a prime material. Benvic is learning from its experiences and acknowledges the difficulties of working with different PVC markets. Grange says the majority of applications are from the construction industry – window and door profiles and pipe technology. Other markets are more difficult to cover due to limited collection, for example. Rigid PVC grades are currently much more recycled as soft PVC has the problem of plasticiser additives.
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greenfield facility in the USA to recycle PP from post-industrial waste. SER North America, the group’s 13th
plant, is located in Anderson, Indiana,
next to its Sirmax North America plant which was built in 2015 and produces compounds based on polyolefins, ETPs, TPEs and bio-based materials. SER North America has a production capacity of
33m lbs, adding to 100m lbs of capacity at the existing plant in Anderson. It has two production lines dedicated to recycled materials. Sirmax says: “Incoming waste material is
controlled at the source through stringent supplier selection and later processed to obtain high-quality output materials. SER North America’s recycled PP is intended both for industrial applications and to be processed by Sirmax North America as a secondary raw material for hybrid compounds marketed under the Green Isofil and Green Isoglass brands. These materials contain mineral fillers or are reinforced with glass fibre and are intended for the production of durable goods for the household appliance and automotive sectors. Though their performance is equivalent to high- grade compounds, they contain varying percent- ages of green material (depending on client specifications), which ensure they have a lower environmental impact.” Lorenzo Ferro, US country manager at Sirmax
Group, says: “SER North America marks a new stage in Sirmax’s sustainable growth. These new green products give us the opportunity to enter sectors where we do not yet have a presence, such as industrial packaging or garden furniture. Our production processes and the fact we have full control of supply sources also means that we are ready to bring post-consumer mechanical recycling technology to the United States by 2024. The vertical integration we have undertaken with SER allows us to differentiate ourselves in the market and meet Sirmax client demands for more sustainable materials in the automotive and household appli-
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