The plastics recycling company claim that the approval makes it the first UK firm to be able to process recovered mixed plastic bottles and to have been given clearance to use a percentage of the subsequent recycled pellets in direct food contact packaging.
Testing to meet the required 
The tests established whether the hot wash process was capable of removing potential contaminants from the feedstock to the European standard, which calls for packaging used in direct contact with food in packaging to be “sufficiently inert” under Article 3 of the EC Regulation 1935/2004.
Jonathan Short, chief executive of AWS, said: “We are delighted to make this announcement which demonstrates our commitment to supplying the highest quality material into the market. This achievement is a testament to our team who have worked extremely hard to achieve this goal.
Scepticism
“We have experienced a lot of scepticism from the UK customer base over the quality of UK processed post-consumer waste due to the generally substandard material being presented to them in recent months. I would hope these results, along with successful trials with those customers, will restore faith in the concept of recycling post-consumer waste to a food grade standard,” he added.
Mr Short, who has overseen a £14 million expansion of the Hemswell plant to include the provision for food-grade plastic reprocessing, claimed that this positive accreditation showed that plastic recycling was “alive and kicking”.
AWS already has an £11 million supply deal in place with Wrexham-based Artenius Pet Packaging Europe (APPE), which sees the plastics recycling firm supply a minimum of 13,000 tonnes of recycled PET (rPET) each year to APPE to be used in beverage container production (see letsrecycle.com story).
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