Romeoville, Ill.-based Parc Corp. is taking a new direction to help plastics manufacturers recycle what the company calls “the unrecyclable.”
Parc has developed a “unique and innovative” technology to reprocess multi-layer laminated flexible packaging films — such as PET/polypropylene, PET/polyethylene, as well as metalized material — and produce pellets for various applications, Vice President Anthony Quarterman told Plastics News.
“That's something nobody [else] is doing,” he said in a Feb. 6 phone interview.
The technology is the result of Parc's decade-long research and development effort. Currently the company has the capacity to produce 20 million pounds of reprocessed pellets annually.
Parc did not reveal more details about the proprietary technology, but it will feature the technology at NPE 2015 in Orlando, Fla. (Booth S28196). The company also will present the technology on Feb. 23 at the Recycling Technology Summit, which is being held in conjunction with the Plastics Recycling Conference in Dallas.
Parc aims to help manufacturers achieve zero-landfill with the new technology. The company opened a 30,000-square-foot facility in Oshkosh, Wis., last month, serving nearly a dozen plants in the Fox Valley area, most of them owned by a major flexible packaging manufacturer that chooses to be unnamed.
Parc said it has secured three-to-five-year recycling service agreements with this packaging manufacturer.
“The new location is fully equipped to promote and execute zero-landfill in close proximity for manufacturers and suppliers who require a spot trailer and especially those who have an onsite compactors or dumpsters,” the company said.
With an initial headcount of five employees, the Oshkosh facility now runs small-scale bailing. It can handle up to 30 million pounds of material annually.
“We are working with trim material that would otherwise go into landfill,” Quarterman said. “Right now we are bringing in about 50,000 pounds [of materials] a day.”
The company calls the new operation “the first step towards zero landfill,” alluding to plans to expand to include sorting, guillotining, grinding and repelletizing at its headquarters in Romeoville .
For now, the materials collected in Oshkosh are shipped to and reprocessed at Parc's China facility.
Parc has made a clear shift to focus more on post-industrial recycling, in response to the rising demand for U.S. manufacturers to achieve closed-loop recycling as well as the reshoring trend.
Parc also plans to mold the material into finished products, such as plastic pallets, for film converters that generate the waste.
Parc also plans to expand its post-industrial recycling business in China, where production of multilayer packaging film has been on the rise.
Quarterman said he joined Parc 10 years ago with a total of 39 years of experience in the plastics industry, including Rock-Tenn Co. and Pactiv Corp.
Parc is the 25th largest recycler in North America with 90 million pounds of annual reprocessing volume, according to Plastics News' recent ranking.
