Industry funded full scale production plant for Enval expected by end of year
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| Full marks for Enval: High grade aluminium reproduced from waste packaging |
The cleantech firm intends to build the plant at Luton where it already has an operational pilot plant before relocating it at a UK waste handling site to demonstrate the technology is both environmentally and financially viable at a large commercial scale.
The new plant will be funded by a consortium of what Enval refers to as well-known, consumer goods brand owners.
Enval can then begin to sell the process which uses a patented technology to extract the aluminium present in huge numbers of laminated consumer goods such as toothpaste tubes, food pouches and drinks cartons.
Enval says the process can recover 100 per cent of the aluminium used in these products and is of sufficiently high grade that it can then be sold on and reused, cutting costs for manufacturers and, more importantly, making previously unrecyclable products recyclable.
It is this final benefit and the positive environmental implications, according to Enval business development director David Boorman, that has companies from across the plastic/aluminium laminate packaging supply chain keen to effectively sponsor the plant.
Other than tetra-pak style packages which salvage the paper pulp before the rest of the material is discarded, almost none of these laminate packages are recyclable. With the Enval process in place that would all change and the famous mobius recycling symbol could emblazon swathes of new products.
"The main driver is their CSR and packaging obligations," said Boorman. "When you look at these products that go out, if you look at the materials they are all single use, there's no way of reusing them."
Enval will initially target waste handlers, though Boorman says interest exists at both the post-consumer waste stage and post-manufacturing.
"We have been talking at all levels of the supply chain: the web laminate manufacturers, converter firms that take the webbing and shape it, FMCGs (fast moving consumer goods) that fill the shape for retailers, the retailers who sell it to consumers and the waste handlers that take it from the consumer.
"At each stage of the production cycle waste is produced from 'trimmings' and at each stage there is interest."
Boorman says this interest will be reflected in the consortium whose members are expected to be revealed in the next couple of months.
