At the beginning of March 2021, Germany’s Röchling (Mannheim; www.roechling.com) opened a new plant for post-industrial recycling of semi-finished polyethylene and polypropylene waste at its domestic site in Geeste-Dalum. Unused remnants and production waste from customers and from the company’s own production facility are to be processed into regrind. The recycling plant is part of Röchling Engineering Plastics, which belongs to the company’s industrial division.

The Dalum plant processes and grinds the waste in the available 6,300 m² of production area. The materials then flow back into semi-finished product production at various Röchling production sites, including the nearby factory in Haren.

This is a groundbreaking step in terms of a closed economic cycle for thermoplastics, according to Röchling Industrial company spokesperson Hartwig Bleker. So far, recycling has been decentralised at the respective production sites. In other areas of the company, Röchling has already been a pioneer in post-industrial recycling: “Unprocessed polystyrene and ABS residues from Röchling’s thermoforming area have been reprocessed for years, for example in the factory in Bad Grönenbach.”

Heiner Englisch, operations manager at the new location, praised the positive synergies. “With this new production facility, we are strengthening our plant in Haren significantly for processing high-quality recyclates, and by concentrating our processing activities at the Dalum location, we can improve efficiency and significantly improve the quality of the intermediate products.”

In the future, the factory area is expected gradually increase to 23,000 m². In the medium term, Röchling is planning a workforce of around 20 at the site. The company declined to comment on the amount of investments already made or planned for the site.