For Silac, plastic is not just a material for a single product. What matters is how it can be used, processed, reused and kept in the material cycle for as long as possible.

There are no simple solutions. Recycled materials must be available, processable and suitable for the specific application. Particularly for packaging with demanding requirements, tested materials, reliable processes and close collaboration throughout the value chain are essential.

Silac reduces material waste, reuses suitable production by-products and uses recycled materials where this makes sense from a technical, quality and economic perspective. Three areas are central to this approach:

Polypropylene (PP) is a versatile plastic widely used in packaging. To recycle PP from food packaging into high-quality applications, effective systems for collection, sorting, treatment and processing are required.

Silac participated in the realcycle project to develop closed-loop systems for polypropylene food packaging, together with partners including Migros, Coop, Emmi, BASF and research institutions such as KATZ and the University of St. Gallen. The aim was to investigate how recycled PP from different packaging streams can be processed and what properties the resulting regranulate has.

As a plastics processor, Silac contributed practical experience in injection moulding. The focus was on how recycled materials behave on production machinery and what requirements they place on process control, tool making, material quality and quality assurance.