On 14 August 2017, Graf Polymers laid the foundation stone for a PE recycling plant at Herbolzheim / Germany, close to the headquarters of the group’s holding company Otto Graf (Teningen / Germany; www.graf-online.de). Using a new separation process, the company plans to extract sorted PE from mixed scrap and refine it to high-quality recyclates that are able to compete with virgin material. Graf will be able to sort dark- and black-coloured scrap plastics that have until now been converted into energy.

Graf’s feedstock centre has a nominal capacity of 45,000 t/y. On the 6.5 hectare plot of land, the company is building one 24,000 m² facility and twelve 30 m-high feedstock silos. The feedstock centre will be operational in summer 2018, with 40 employees to start with.

The German family business is investing more than EUR 30m into this project. It will be the largest investment in over 50 years of Graf's corporate history. The plant is being subsidised by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Construction and Nuclear Safety (BMUB; Berlin; www.bmub.bund.de) – with EUR 8m from the “Eco-Innovation” programme. For the first time, “several process steps with all new equipment technology will be linked in a process chain, from sorting up to recycling and quality assurance,” said the company.

Graf will use the recyclate for the production of its water and rainwater management product portfolios at its locations in Teningen and Dachstein / Germany. Since both production plants are already using secondary materials, the new plant is a backward integration. By opening up new feedstock sources, the company will become more independent in its injection moulding, injection stamping, rotational and blow moulding activities.

The plastics processor sees its new plant as a cornerstone for further growth. In the last 10 years, continual investments have reportedly doubled both the turnover and the number of employees. Recently, Graf bought a facility from dissolved Sotralentz-Habitat in Poland. The Graf group and its 450 employees have generated sales of around EUR 95m in the past business year.