Erema inaugurates new R&D centre with 40th anniversary celebration

Manfred Hackl, CEO Erema Group and Markus Huber-Lindinger, managing director Erema, open the Erema Discovery Day 2023.

Discovery Day 2023, Erema's open house event, which the company hosted at its headquarters in Ansfelden, Austria on 1 June, was this year attended by a crowd of around 400 customers and partners, mainly from Europe, who came both to learn about the latest Erema technologies - and to celebrate the company's 40th anniversary.

The annual event, which this year included a gala evening on the night before and a presentation programme the next day, not only marked the company's anniversary milestone, but also inaugurated its brand new R&D centre. The company has built on two halls with a total area of 1,550 square metres and a new office building offering space for 50 workplaces has been built.

The presentation programme focussed this year on the wide range of recycling technologies developed by Erema to handle polyolefin and PET plastic waste. These included, amongst others, the company's textile recycling technology, Refresher deoderisation technology, its new laser filter size and the new EcoGentle plasticising technology for PET recycling - Erema's answer to the ‘demand for rising throughputs and low energy consumption’, said Sophie Pachner, R&D manager Process Engineering.

EcoGentle plasticising technology, achieved through the changes in the screw design, adjustment of compression ratios for better solids handling behaviour, the targeted utilisation of shear flows in combination with elongation flows, and a number of other process and rheological optimisations, increases both the melting performance and the dispersive and distributive mixing capacity in the plasticising unit. The result is particularly gentle plasticising at a lower temperature, combined with high melt homogeneity and a wide process window for more stable operation. The much lower melt temperature has a positive effect on the quality of the melt and the quality of the final rPET pellets.

Sophie Pachner

"The system can reach up to 12 % in total energy saving and up to 47% energy saving for the extruder drive. With all these energy savings and improvements, we are now able to have a throughput of 6000 kilogrammes per hour of PT bottle flakes on just one single screw extruder, which I think is a very, very big number," she said.

In her presentation on the process, Pachner noted that while the process was currently only available for PET processing, studies are already ongoing that are running an Eco Gentle plasticising unit for polyolefins as well.The various technologies presented - six in total - could be viewed live in the afternoon on the organised tours where live demonstrations were provided, both at the Ansfelden site and at the new site nearby in St. Marien.

"This wide range of technologies is necessary because the recycling process each of our customers choose depends on the type of plastic, the level of contamination of the input material, and which product will be made using the recycled pellets," said managing director Markus Huber-Lindinger."With the new R&D centre, we have laid the foundation for further important plastics recycling milestones from Erema. This innovative strength is what has made us stand out over the past 40 years, and we will continue to play this pioneering role."

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