"Recycling and the circular economy have arrived one hundred percent in the plastics industry. This year's K showed that very clearly," says Manfred Hackl, CEO of EREMA Group GmbH. The decision to have all group companies exhibiting on the same stand proved to be a good one, because they were able to provide an excellent overview of their wide-ranging machine portfolio and each of their innovations. There was no indication at the EREMA Group's stand or in the Circonomic Centre of the fact that K had fewer visitors overall this year than in 2019.
The absolute trade fair highlights included the INTAREMA® TVEplus® DuaFil® Compact double filtration machine, which EREMA presented for the first time, and the EcoGentle® plasticising unit. Both extrusion innovations achieve effective benefits for the quality of melt, recycled pellets, and final product, and set the benchmark in terms of energy efficiency for their post consumer and PET recycling applications. "We have already received the first orders for these two technologies, which confirms that we are meeting customer needs very well," says Hackl. This also applies to the READYMAC recycling machine made to stock by UMAC, which is an impressive, quickly-available all-rounder for standard applications, as well as to the new ALPHA XS edge trim recycling machine for the inhouse recycling segment made by PLASMAC. UMAC and PLASMAC are both EREMA Group companies.
Other trade fair début appearances included the bottle-to-bottle application for the production of food contact compliant rPET pellets and new sizes of VACUREMA® technology plants, enabling throughputs of up to six tonnes per hour. On the VACUNITE® system - a combination of VACUREMA® Basic and VLean Solid State Polycondensation (SSP) - a larger series has also been added to the existing range. One of the new VACUNITE® 2621T 2.000 plants was ordered by an rPET manufacturer at the show.
