The leading tube packaging manufacturer has become the first company of its kind to signs a deal with Saperatec, the world’s pioneer industrial recycling plant for aluminium laminate composites.

The Saperatec pilot plant in Dessau, Germany has already demonstrated the capability to break down multilayer composite materials such as PE/AI into their individual materials.

Neopac is a renowned manufacturer of tubes for pharmaceutical, cosmetics and dental industries, will supply its production waste to Saperatec’s industrial separation facility upon its opening in mid-2023.

However, by applying a special washing technique, Saperatec splits plastic and aluminium layers without solvating them. During a laboratory study at Saperatec in 2021on various ABL tubes from Neopac demonstrated that the company’s Polyfoil tubes could be entirely separated in this procedure.

Peter Bossert, the Head of Materials Development at Hoffmann Neopac said, “In addition to the already existing environmentally friendly and recyclable tubes from our EcoDesign portfolio, we are committed to a recycling solution for our conventional Polyfoil ABL tubes.”

“With this new initiative, we will offer our customers the best possible balance between product safety and sustainability.

“As early as this year, we will make a portion of our production waste available to Saperatec to demonstrate its recyclability on an industrial scale, per the promising laboratory tests that have been performed. With the pending recycling of ABL tubes, we are closing a recycling gap in our portfolio.”

Thorsten Hornung, the Managing Director of Saperatec commented: “With the construction of the first recycling plant for composite materials made of plastic, paper and aluminium, we aim to produce high-quality, film-ready plastic recyclates for packaging applications while returning the recovered aluminium to the material cycle.”