About 200 people attended an open house focused on recycled PET and high density polyethylene for packaging at Starlinger viscotec in St. Martin, Austria, Sept. 12-13.

Starlinger highlighted machinery at its new 215,000-square-foot plant and technical center.

The open house marked the world premier of the vicsoSheet, which was producing sheet from 100 percent recycled PET for food contact, after the material had been dried in the deCON module. After the decontamination step, the warm and dry flakes run through a color sorter, where flakes with changed color, such as multilayer or PVC, can easily be sorted out, before the flakes go into the gravimetric feeding system of the sheet line.

Starlinger technicians analyzed the sheet in the laboratory, using gas chromatography according to the Fraunhofer method.

On the second day of the event, employees increased the intrinsic viscosity of virgin pellets by using the vicsoStar reactor. The pellets were fed directly into the sheet line.

Speakers at the event included Santiago Garcia-Gonzalez, a chemical engineer at the National University of Mexico; Allan Griff, an independent chemical engineer; Edward Kosior, managing director of Nextek Ltd.; Sion Stanfield, a veteran of the retail sector.