United Kingdom: Nestlé invests in flexible materials recycling

After debuting this year as a partner in the first Mexican chemical recycling plant, Nestlé is again, this time in the UK, getting into the field of post-consumer flexible goods recovery. Swiss food company Impact Recycling has announced a £7m contribution to a grant for a project designed to reach commercial scale, which will be intermediated by government agency Innovation UK. The project has a 25,000 t/y unit scheduled to start up in County Durham in 2024. According to The Manufacturer’s website, the plant’s capacity will exceed the typical volume of multi-material film scrap produced in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland by Nestlé packaging, such as Gigat chocolates. The so-called BOSS process, developed by Impact Recycling and not described, stands out for promoting the separation of post-consumer materials when laminated packaging floats or sinks when submerged in water. This sorting, according to reports, makes it easier to mechanically recycle the waste, enabling its second use in applications outside the human interaction spectrum (the focus of chemical recycling) such as civil construction, plastics and bags and bags.