The second phase of AWS Eco Plastics’ £14 million capital investment programme at Hemswell in Lincolnshire has been completed with the installation of a hot wash and extrusion line.
The new line allows AWS to process hot wash PET flake and pellets for the first time: until now it was only able to produce dry washed PET. Capacity at Hemswell has now been increased to 80,000 tonnes annually.
AWS won a contract last autumn to supply 13,000 tonnes of r-PET pellet to Artenius Pet Packaging Europe, a subsidiary of PET producer La Sede De Barcelona, for use in the production of bottles for carbonated beverages. AWS says that because of the scale of the sort and hot wash process it will always have surplus hot wash PET flake for sale in to the thermoforming market and the company is currently discussing supply contracts with a number of interested parties.
Among the new equipment installed at Hemswell is a closed loop water processing system capable of recycling up to 15 m³/hr of water back to a fresh state to be reused in the process, which the company says is the first such equipment to be used in a plastic bottle processing facility.
Source: britishplastics.co.uk
