Coveris has announced the opening of its new plastics recycling facility in Louth, UK, which it says ‘creates a new lifecycle for printed PE packaging films from post-industrial waste sources’.
The plant is the second facility in the company’s new ReCover recycling business segment, following the acquisition of what is now ReCover Blaenavon, a post-consumer waste mechanical recycling facility in North Wales, announced in December 2022.
At ReCover Louth, an ‘innovative’ de-inking recycling process has been developed, to remove inks from printed low density PE films, which are then re-granulated into high quality recycled resin pellets, called ReGen. These are then included in the extrusion process with virgin raw material to make new PE films for Coveris’s packaging production.
The site has a yearly capacity of 5,000 tonnes of ReGen pellets, and the company said the capability will support its No Waste vision and wider packaging sustainability frameworks in the UK and the EU.
Coveris CEO Christian Kolarik commented, ‘When we started to develop ReCover, our ambition was to close the loop and introduce a new business model, establishing ourselves as a recycler with a clear leadership in technological know-how.’
