SPE Thermoforming Quarterly - SPE Thermoforming Division

Thermoforming Quarterly is a journal published quarterly by the Thermoforming Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers. The magazine is a great way to keep up with industry trends and developments. SPE Thermoforming Division members receive the magazine by mail four times a year. Non-members can access old issues here via PDF file. If you are not an SPE member this is a great reason to join! Become a member today to start receiving this valuable information in your mailbox.

We welcome objective, technical and related articles that provide valuable information to our community of thermoformers, toolmakers, material suppliers and OEMs. Articles are typically 1500-2000 words. We recommend viewing past articles for further guidance. All submissions should be in MS Word, 12-pt Times New Roman.

Artwork, illustrations, photos and graphics should be 300 dpi. We prefer .eps .jpeg and .pdf files

Deadlines for copy and artwork – 1st Quarter: February 15; 2nd Quarter: May 15; 3rd Quarter: August 1; 4th Quarter: November 15

All submissions can be sent to Conor Carlin, Editor, at cpcarlin@gmail.com

Thermoforming Quarterly Sponsorship Sales Contact: Lesley Kyle, +1 914-671-9524 or lesley@openmindworks.com

Fourth Quarter 2019

Thermoform Recycling Operation Comes to California
By Dan Leif, Resource Recycling (reprinted with permission)

A Mexican company that developed a system to process post-consumer PET thermoforms will open a $7 million plant in the Los Angeles area. It’s now on the hunt for thermoform bales.

Green Impact Plastics is currently handling recovered PET thermoforms at a site in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, said company owner Octavio Victal. He noted that since March, the operation has been dialing in its processing system in a partnership with California reclaimer rPlanet Earth.

The two companies recently ran a trial in which 1 million pounds of thermoforms, purchased from California materials recovery facilities (MRFs), were transported to the Juarez facility. Green Impact processed the plastic and then shipped clean flake to rPlanet Earth’s Vernon, Calif. site, where it was fed into rPlanet’s thermoform sheet production line.
Representatives from both companies told Plastics Recycling Update they deemed the trial a success, and rPlanet Earth signed an offtake agreement with Green Impact. That has opened the door to higher output volumes in Juarez and a new facility in California, which is slated to open in the second quarter of 2020, according to Victal.

Multilayer EVOH/PP packaging in processing and performance of recycled PP
By Didier Houssier, Geert Herremans, Kuraray, EVAL Europe N.V., (Antwerp, Belgium), Edward Kosior, Dr Jon Mitchell, Kelvin Davies, Nextek Ltd (London, UK)

Kuraray, EVAL Europe N.V. (EE) produces Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol copolymers (EVAL™), which are used in multilayer structures in a combination with a wide range of materials such as Polypropylene (PP) to produce multilayer trays, pots, or capsules to provide superior barrier properties to gases, flavours or bring functional barriers against external contaminants such as mineral oils (MOSH, MOAH). Such trays are typically made by co-extrusion technology followed by thermoforming in-line or off-line, and are used for food packaging such as coffee, ready meals, and other packaging applications for sauces, fruit salads, or for the packaging of medical products for which the water barrier of PP is of added value.

The objective of the study was to investigate if multilayer EVOH/PP rigid packaging material, which is a percentage of the post-consumer recycling stream, can be effectively sorted with the PP stream and decontaminated back to food grade approved for use as Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR)-PP into food packaging applications.

Multilayer rigid food packaging found in the post-consumer recycling stream has been represented in the design of materials guides and recycling guides as ‘may be suitable’ for recycling. The present work investigates the recyclability of EVOH barrier packaging due to the growing trends of multilayer rigid food packaging and more importantly, as recovery systems strive towards a better circular economy.

Full articles appears in print magazine mailed to members.

2019