The company, which has its UK head quarters in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, is to introduce equipment to make recycled PET packaging from post-consumer waste and its own post-industrial waste.
The investment in equipment will allow greater control over the rPET we produce and enable us to incorporate waste from our manufacturing processes
Adam Barnett, LINPAC Packaging
The recycled plastic, which will be known as 'Rfresh', will use a minimum of 50% post-consumer recyclable plastics and will meet EU legislative requirements for food contact use.
Every item in the Rfresh range is capable of preserving fresh meat, fish and poultry for up to 10 days in a conventional chilled distribution system, the company claimed.
And, the packaging has been tested for performance and retains the clarity and thermal stability of PET packaging, which provides the same barrier needed to protect and preserve food from damage or contamination, it said.
Recycling
Currently, the £1.1 billion company, of which LINPAC Packaging forms 47%, recycles 36,000 tonnes of used plastic a year and, with the new equipment, has the opportunity to increase the amount of used plastic in production by extruding and thermoforming at the Featherstone site.
Adam Barnett, vice president of marketing at LINPAC Packaging, said: “Rfresh was developed to allow retailers the opportunity to offer their customers a sustainable packaging option that still combines all of the traditional qualities associated with LINPAC products.”
“The investment in equipment will allow greater control over the rPET we produce and enable us to incorporate waste from our manufacturing processes,” he added.
Amount
The amount of Rfresh packaging that it plans to produce at the Featherstone site is not yet available due to commercial sensitivity, but a spokesman did confirm that the plastic will be bought from a number of sources.
In February, the packaging firm featured on the BBC current affairs programme “Inside Out”, discussing the quality of plastic available through commingled collections and explained how it is forced to purchase plastics for reuse from outside the UK (see letsrecycle.com story).
LINPAC packaging currently operates in 26 countries around the world and has a 30,000 tonne capacity plastics recycling facility in Allerton Bywater, West Yorkshire.
Register for free to comment