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

There are no simple answers here. Recycled materials must be available, processable, and suitable for the specific application. Especially for packaging with high standards, tested materials, reliable processes, and close collaboration throughout the value chain are essential.

Silac reduces material waste, reuses suitable production byproducts, and uses recycled materials wherever it makes sense from a technical, quality, and economic standpoint. Three areas are central to this approach:

Polypropylene (PP) is a versatile plastic and is frequently used for packaging. To ensure that PP from food packaging can be recycled into high-performance applications, effective collection, sorting, treatment, and processing systems are needed.

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

As a plastics processor, Silac brought practical experience in injection molding to the table. The focus was on how recycled materials can be processed on actual machines and what requirements this places on process control, tooling, material quality, and quality inspection.