Two new Starlinger lines for food-grade rPET to Italian PET recycler Dentis

With two Starlinger recoSTAR PET bottle-to-bottle recycling lines, Piedmont-based Dentis Recycling Italy expanded its product portfolio and now offers food-grade rPET pellets in addition to hot-washed PET bottle flakes. In 2021, one of the Italy’s biggest recyclers of post-consumer PET bottles initiated a new project to extend its rPET production capacity and purchased two Starlinger recoSTAR PET 330 HC iV+ recycling systems. The new lines were commissioned in summer 2022 and are recycling used PET bottles into high-quality rPET pellets that Dentis sells under the new brand name Repeter. With a combined production capacity of 6.6 tons per hour, the total yearly output of the lines amounts to 50,000 tons of finest bottle-grade rPET pellets.

Dentis reaches an important project milestone this year: The company will recycle a total of 80,000 tons of post-consumer PET bottles collected through the Italian collection systems operated by Corepla and Coripet. After completion of the capacity extension in 2024, the potential recycling capacity of the Piedmont site will amount to approximately 130,000 tons of post-consumer PET bottles per year.

“We want to support the transition from a linear economy to a circular economy”, said Roberto Dentis, co-owner of Dentis Recycling Italy. “With technology from Starlinger we can be sure that the recycled PET we produce meets the elevated standards of our customers in the food and beverage packaging sector. By producing high-quality food-grade recycled PET pellets we are able to maintain a closed loop for PET bottles and contribute effectively to achieving the European recycling targets, making post-consumer plastic packaging no longer a waste to be disposed of but turning it into an important resource for top-quality packaging.”

The food-grade rPET pellets produced on the Starlinger lines and marketed under the brand name Repeter are available in several colours. Besides approvals for use in food packaging from numerous big brand owners, the Starlinger PET recycling process has received positive opinions from the European Food Safety Authority EFSA as well as LNOs from the US Food and Drug Administration FDA. Dentis supplies the food-grade rPET pellets to important brand owners in the food and beverage industry as well as to local plastic packaging producers.