Tomra system produces rLDPE in Turkey

The Germany-based Tomra Recycling Sorting business unit of Norway’s Tomra Systems has supplied equipment that helps Bakcycle Recycling of Turkey produce marketable recycled-content low-density polyethylene (rLDPE) pellets from discarded flexible packaging.

The recycling firm was founded by Bakioğlu Holding, which Tomra calls a pioneer in Turkey’s packaging sector. Since late 2023, Bakcycle has been producing rLDPE pellets used as a substitute for virgin materials at a plant in Izmir, Turkey.

“The Bakcycle Recycling project is an important initiative showing how advanced technology can help increase the use of recycled content in flexible packaging production,” says Oral Çimsöken, emerging markets sales manager at Tomra Recycling Sorting.

The recycling plant’s infeed comes from discarded LDPE packaging sourced from municipal and packaging scrap sorting facilities, and the recycled-content pellets are used in flexible packaging production.

The 215,000-square-foot facility in Izmir is equipped with five AutoSort sensor-based sorting machines made by Tomra and has been designed to convert approximately 8,000 tons of LDPE scrap into rLDPE pellets. That production capacity could double within two years, according to Tomra.

“Despite the rapid growth of the flexible packaging sector, its recovery rates lag behind those of other packaging types like PET [polyethylene terephthalate] or HDPE [high-density polyethylene],” says Övünç Dirik, general manager of Bakcycle Recycling.

“We aimed to address this gap, and we have succeeded in establishing Turkey’s first facility [that] encompasses processes such as optical sorting, hot washing, extrusion with laser filtering, and odor removal. Tomra’s optical sorting systems enable pre-sorting of unwanted fractions from the input [material] and sort it by material type and color.”

In the facility’s processing line, three Tomra AutoSort SpeedAir systems are at the front of the line, followed by two more AutoSort unites. While the SpeedAir model is developed for film applications, the latter is Tomra's “multifunctional sorting all-rounder.”

In a sorting process based on color and polymer, the first and second SpeedAir systems separate transparent LDPE from other materials. The third machine separates the collected transparent LDPE from transparent linear low-density polyethylene.

The final two AutoSort units are tasked with sorting mixed-color and white LDPE. Thanks to the five Tomra machines, Bakcycle Recycling achieves purity levels of more than 98 percent in the sorting processes, the technology firm says.

“Using recycled material in LDPE film production is delicate work—any tiny mistake can be easily spotted, so our expectations of quality are very high," Dirik says. "Tomra’s advanced sensor-based sorting systems address these challenges, enhancing the quality of the recycled output and speeding up operations.”