Plastics recycler Steinbeis PolyVert officially opened a new production line for recycled polyolefin in Austria in the second half of May. The investment made by Germany’s Steinbeis group at the Völkermarkt facility totals around €50m, of which €36m was allocated to the new line, which represented a breakthrough in plastic recycling and would provide an economic boost for the region of southern Carinthia, the company said.
With a continuous production capacity of up to 5 tonnes of material per hour in continuous operations, the Völkermarkt plant would be a central pillar within the Steinbeis group. Over 50,000 tonnes of recycled material will be produced at the site every year, the company said.
Steinbeis PolyVert, which used to do business as Kruschitz, has undergone a major technological and structural transformation since its acquisition by Steinbeis in 2019. Underlining those changes, managing director André Aßmann said: "Our products today are no longer comparable with those of the past." The company’s latest recycling technology enabled more than 90 per cent of pre-sorted plastic waste to be turned into high-quality recycled material.
The company currently has 122 employees. The Völkermarkt plant is to employ AI-supported sorting technology to remove hard-to-recognise materials, such as multilayer bottles. "Today, recycling is no longer just about mechanical recycling; it's about intelligent raw material recovery," Mr Aßmann added.
