Dutch company is looking for innovative technologies and application to make upgrading of the by-products in their current plastic recycling process possible.

Worldwide there is an increasing attention for the circular reuse of materials including plastics. This Dutch company is a plastic recycling company that recycles post-consumer plastic packaging into granulate, especially Polyethylene and Polypropylene. The company is now able to turn about 60% of the waste stream back into high-grade applicable plastics. The remaining 40%, the by-products, are now still incinerated or used as fillers in the cement industry. This residual flow consists of the following components: - Residual flow fraction after sorting, various plastics, 1000 tons per year - Wet sieve fraction after cold washing with respectively 90% PP or PE, 600 tons per year - Press fraction after hot washing with respectively 90% PP or PE, 400 tonnes per year - Dry sieve fraction with respectively 90% PP or PE, 400 tonnes per year The company has a large network of (potential) channels for its by-products from the production process, but is looking for an "out of the box" sustainable solution for the processing of its by-products. So how can the sustainability and / or circularity of plastic recycling be optimized? The current market for by-products from recycling processes focus on low-quality & low-cost removal of fractions instead of high-quality & sustainable processing. The company wants to achieve this high quality and sustainable processing and is therefore looking for solutions to further separate these by-products and make them usable again as high-grade material. The company is looking for cooperation with companies with expertise to further separate this waste stream and to upgrade it to high-quality recyclate or other applications. And to companies that can use components from this waste stream in their production process at a high level of quality. The company is looking for the joint (further) development of one or more applications through the processing of one or more by-products that arise from the recycling of plastics and setting up a collaboration to upgrade processing of by-products from recycling to, for example, a new sustainable raw material. The company is interested in cooperation based on a research cooperation agreement or a technology cooperation agreement. IMPORTANT NOTE: This technology request is part of an innovation challenge and is published on an open innovation platform from the 31st of August until 5th of Octobre. If an organisation does express interest in cooperation with this firm before closing date, it will be guided towards this open innovation platform on which one can get in touch with the company experts. Mind that posts on this platform are not confidential. Beside open discussions on the platform, sharing of confidential information will be made possible on demand. After that, the firm will select the SME's that will be invited for further contact to discuss cooperation possibilities aimed at the development of a solution . Once the challenge is closed, EOI's for this technology request will be treated in the traditional way.