Jannick Sercu, Marketing Director of Galloo Plastics discusses plastic compounds and the value to be found from ELVs.
Jannick Sercu, Marketing Director Galloo Plastics discusses plastic compounds and the value to be found from ELVs.
GALLOO PLASTICS is a subsidiary of Galloo Group, one of the leading recycling groups in Europe with more than 40 subsidiaries in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Galloo was founded more than 80 years ago and started as a simple scrap metal recycler.
Meanwhile, the company is handling around 1.500.000 tons of ferrous metals, 100.000 tons of non-ferrous metals and 50.000 tons of plastics. Over the years, the company has been investing a lot of resources in Post Shredder Technologies and has become a significant player in the industry.
In the light of the ever-higher recycling targets of End of Life Vehicles, already in the ’90, the Galloo Group understood they had to recycle the plastics as well. In 1997 Galloo Plastics was founded, and that meant the start of the recycling of plastics for the group.
Galloo can sort out a plastics mix from Automotive Shredder Residue (ASR) and Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and this mainly by in-house developed separation techniques.
This plastics mix is then further purified and separated into PP, PS, ABS and HD-PE regrind, which after fine regrinding and cleaning are then compounded into valuable plastic compounds.
The compounding takes place at one of the five extruders they operate. The final polypropylene compounds can be unfilled, but can also be filled with talcum to allow for higher stiffness or with EPDM to allow for higher shock resistance.
During the compounding process, several additives can be used to enhance specific properties of the final product, such as temperature stability, UV-stability, scratch resistance etc.
The whole process is under continuous quality control. Every final batch of products gets its proper product certificate, indicating the most important specifications.
The recovered HD-PE is, due to its low melt flow index, mainly destined for extrusion parts.
The ABS and PS granules are mainly used for the production of technical parts for the electro and automotive industry, but also for the building, horticulture, agriculture and other sectors.
Most of the produced granules in polypropylene are being reused in the injection moulding for car parts, such as wheel arch liners, engine bottom protection plates, bumper parts, under the bonnet parts and for other technical parts.
This way Galloo is closing the loop, plastics from End of Life Vehicles are being reused in brand new cars.
To find out more about GALLOO PLASTICS visit www.gallooplastics.eu
