October 29th, 2020
Amerplast is constantly looking for ways to produce more sustainable flexible packaging and to ensure the high quality of our products and services. This year, we have invested in both sustainability and quality to support our strategy to promote circular economy and further develop the quality of our flexo printing.
Investing in printing quality and safety in production
Amerplast is well-known for its high quality printing. We can print up to 10 colours in HD quality, and people working in our printing departments are highly skilled. To further develop the efficiency and maintain high quality of our flexo printing, we need to make sure that our printing machines and other machinery are supporting our operations in the best possible way.
In the Summer of 2020, Amerplast invested in Renzmann washing apparatus for washing the printing machines’ parts in Grodzisk factory in Poland. This investment will increase production efficiency, work safety and printing excellence. New Renzmann washing machine has been in use since the beginning of October. It is solvent based and closed loop system. The used solvents will be internally reprocessed back to printing process.
Increasing the effectiveness of internal plastics recycling
Amerplast has a long history of working with recycled raw materials. We have been manufacturing recycled plastic packaging, such as carrier bags, since the beginning of the 90s. We use recycled materials from industrial sources and separately collected from Finnish households. We also utilize our internal PE waste generated in our production.
To further increase the effectiveness of internal plastics recycling and the versatile use of recycled plastics in flexible packaging applications, Amerplast invested in new plastic recycling machinery. Intarema 1108 TE supplied by EREMA – is now up and running at the carrier bag factory in Tampere. It has been in the production since the beginning of July and the production output has been on the expected level.
Thanks to increase in capacity, we have been able to produce different fractions more efficiently, and have already been able to increase the recycled content in different film recipes. Due to our long history of transforming recycled raw materials into high quality plastic packaging, we are an industry leader in the utilisation of recycled raw materials in different flexible packaging applications.
Amerplast decreasing the CO2 emissions of its production
In addition to developing and producing sustainable packaging solutions, Amerplast is paying attention to the environmental effects of its production. We are investing in new, more energy effective production equipment, minimizing the amount of waste produced, increasing material efficiency and paying attention to our emissions.
When it comes to the source of energy we use, we want to make more sustainable choices. In the Spring of 2020, we changed our energy source partly to hydropower to lower the amount of CO2 emissions caused by the packaging production. Due to this change, we are able to decrease our annual CO2 emissions on average by 4 million kg CO2-ekv. Hydropower is 100% renewable source of energy.
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