Alto Packaging installs Amut Ecotech, Erema extrusion line

Amut Ecotech, a designer of plastic recycling plants based in Novara, Italy, has partnered with Austria-based Erema to install and commission Alto Packaging Ltd.’s first extrusion line for food-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET) sheets in the New Zealand market. Alto Packaging produces rigid plastic packaging from eight plants in New Zealand and four in Australia.

Alto Packaging’s plant in Albany, New Zealand, now processes 100 percent washed postconsumer flakes into 100 percent food-contact grade monolayer thermoforming sheet.

According to a news release from Amut Ecotech, Alto, which is a division of Pact Group, invested in the new food-grade PET sheet extrusion line as a part of Pact Group’s vision to lead a circular economy through packaging in Australia and New Zealand.

The plant features Erema’s Vacurema PET recycling technology as well as the Amut Inline Sheet production technology. Melt goes straight from the Vacurema 1716 T Basic to the Amut plant without the detour of pelletizing, Amut Ecotech reports. The postconsumer PET material is decontaminated and predried prior to extrusion in the vacuum reactor of the Vacurema Basic, which has a throughput of up to 1,500 kilograms per hour. After high-capacity filtration by Erema’s SW-RTF backflush filter and online intrinsic viscosity measurement, the melt goes into the Amut Inline Sheet plant where it is processed into thermoforming sheet from 0.15 millimeters to 1.2 millimeters of thickness. Amut Ecotech says the monolayer thermoforming sheet produced from the pure rPET is 100 percent food-contact compliant. Alto processes that material into trays and food containers.