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Luxus Makes Moves To Help Manufacturers Reduce Their Environmental Impacts

Technical compounder Luxus is showcasing its high performance polymer range including PP thermoplastics and how they contribute to reducing the environmental impacts of manufacturers’ products at the PDM exhibition (www.pdmevent.com), 19th-20th June 2018 (stand A009).

As one of the UK’s most advanced technical compounders Luxus has for over 50 years spearheaded the re-engineering of sustainable polymers into high quality, yet cost efficient technical compounds that deliver low carbon benefits and reduce landfill.

Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus, comments on the challenges ahead: “The perceived environmental hazard plastics can present has been widely reported recently. To help manufacturers reverse these negative perceptions, we can offer an immediate carbon-positive solution in most polymers to support numerous industries.

“Attention is now being focused on how to effectively reduce environmental impacts; improve resource efficiency and lower carbon, all without any compromise in performance. While there is recognition too of the need to support the circular economy, rather than current linear approaches by prioritising ‘end-of-life’ needs through product design.”

Luxus leads the market on this issue of sustainability by offering a broad range of post-consumer recycled content grades to deliver added value even in the most demanding applications, from ‘A’ surface visible automotive interiors and recently exteriors, to rigid packaging and civil engineering.

In the automotive sector, its high performance PP portfolio including mineral and glass filled compounds meets the sustainability, technical and cost goals sought by the industry and is on par with virgin alternatives.

Luxus has continually invested in the development of lightweight compounds with enhanced scratch resistance for ‘A’ surface materials. Its Hycolene™ range for example, offers manufacturers the option of using up to 60% recycled content to further the environmental and technical performance of finished components. This latest iteration of the Hycolene range has the potential to take the density down to 0.850 without adverse effect on key mechanical properties.

Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus, continues: “Currently, the ability to answer the call for materials with increased sustainability to help meet consumers’ eco-concerns is a business critical rather than an aspirational choice.”

For more information visit www.luxus.co.uk or stand A009 at the PDM 2018 show.

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Notes to editors

For further information please contact: Sasha Stewart, Straight Talk PR, tel: 07764 346 896 or email: sasha@straighttalkpr.co.uk

Image: Luxus manufacturing plant.

Luxus Ltd (www.luxus.co.uk)

UK leading independent technical plastics recycling and compounding company Luxus has been developing highly specified thermoplastics compounds based on prime and recycled feedstocks for 50 years. Luxus is a key supplier to the major names in the global auto industry and it was the first and still is the only UK business to achieve approval for its recycled grades in car interior trims.

Luxus also offers specialist ‘closed loop’ and ‘open loop’ recycling services to manage ‘end of life’ post industrial and consumer waste for the retail transit packaging, construction and local authority wheel bin markets.

 

Luxus Polymer Analysis Service Tests For 'End-of-Life' Recyclability

Each year in the UK 3.5m tonnes of plastics go to landfill because black and coloured plastic cannot be detected by recyclers. Since these plastics feature carbon black and other pigments which strongly absorb infrared radiation, offering little reflectance that renders them ‘invisible’ to sensors.

Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus, comments: “Design for recyclability is an urgent priority for producers right now. This unique service offers the ability to quickly assess if any coloured plastic item produced can be detected and if not, we will offer a colour matched infrared detectable alternative.”

From this month, brand owners, retailers and packaging producers will be able to ensure that anything from black shampoo bottles to yellow yogurt pots and brown coffee pods can be analysed to find out if they are ‘visible’ via optical sorting methods.

Supporting this innovative service is a new spectrophotometer capable of reading solar reflectance in the NIR spectrum. It enables therefore, the measurement of solar reflectance levels of colourants to ensure that specified polymers do not inhibit near-infrared sorting.

 Peter Atterby, explains: “Our service represents a real ‘game changer’ for brand owners and product designers. Since this is the first time that a spectrophotometer is being used to identify near-infrared reflectance levels to achieve the very best NIR sorting wavelengths for plastics that previously would have remained undetected.

“We are able to clearly identify pigment mixes given a near-infrared footprint and then expertly assess every possible colourant combination to meet the challenge of finding the closest and most economically viable colour match for designers, satisfying both aesthetic and plastics pollution concerns.”

The spectrophotometer is also pivotal to NIRSort, a new £1.29m (€1.47m) two year project, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme that aims to tackle our wider plastics waste problem.

With partners Polykemi and One51 it will bring to market a new range of infra-red reflecting (IRR) colourants to be adopted beyond packaging itself. It will address a much broader range of applications including the plastics found in household electrical appliances to automotive components for the very first time.

The initial materials trials for the NIRSort project will be completed in the spring this year. For information on the new coloured polymer analysis service please visit: www.luxus.co.uk.

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Notes to editors

For further information please contact: Sasha Stewart, Straight Talk PR, tel: 07764 346 896 or email: sasha@straighttalkpr.co.uk

Luxus Ltd (www.luxus.co.uk)

UK leading independent technical plastics recycling and compounding company Luxus has been developing highly specified thermoplastics compounds based on prime and recycled feedstocks for 50 years. Luxus is a key supplier to the major names in the global auto industry and it was the first and still is the only UK business to achieve approval for its recycled grades in car interior trims.

Luxus also offers specialist ‘closed loop’ and ‘open loop’ recycling services to manage ‘end of life’ post industrial and consumer waste for the retail transit packaging, construction and local authority wheel bin markets.

About Polykemi (www.polykemi.se)

Polykemi AB (est. 1968) is Scandinavia´s leading developer and producer of tailor made thermoplastic compounds. With a factory in China and contract producer in US, it is a global supplier of world class compounds. Polykemi work closely together with customers guided by their principles: reliability, excellence, superior problem-solving skills and long-term relationships.

About One51 (www.one51.com)

One51 is a leading rigid plastics manufacturer for the packaging, environmental containers and industrial products sectors operating from multiple production facilities in Ireland, the UK, North America and China. One51 employs c.1,600 people and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

Horizon 2020 (www.ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020)

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.

   
 



 
 

Luxus To Promote Environmentally Positive Polymers At WRAP Cymru Event

Technical plastics compounder Luxus will be promoting the benefits environmentally positive polymers can deliver to Welsh manufacturers at a WRAP Cymru event on the 17th November 2017 at the Swalec Stadium, Cardiff.

The event, ‘Forming the Link: A Resilient Supply Chain for Plastics Manufacturing in Wales’, will be chaired by WRAP director, Peter Maddox and will also feature presentations from its sector specialist, Bernard Chase along with Luxus managing director, Peter Atterby. “Luxus is delighted to be invited to speak at this event, the Welsh auto component industry has enjoyed sustained growth in recent years. It will provide a great opportunity therefore, for Luxus and fellow industry experts to dispel the myth regarding the perceived quality of recycled content polymers compared to prime alternatives.

“We will focus on the critical role environmentally positive polymers now play in supporting global auto interior component design, to deliver greater fuel efficiency and lower CO2 emissions while also satisfying automakers’ need to reduce the carbon footprint of vehicles.

“The adoption of our advanced lightweight polymer range Hycolene™ with up to 60% recycled content for example, can lead to a 12g weight saving on a single component in one model. This would mean CO2 emissions reducing by more than a 1000 tonnes, over the course of the model’s life-time.

“But most importantly, its use will also increase the volume of recyclate that can be used by the automakers, which means a reduction in the amount of virgin polymer manufactured – therefore preserving limited natural resources.” Said Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus.

In March this year Luxus also announced it had acquired South Wales based additive and masterbatch specialist, Colour Tone. The company is known for its pioneering work with WRAP to address the problem of black food packaging waste.

Black plastic packaging contains carbon black pigments which absorb infra-red light and cannot therefore, be optically sorted by equipment with near infra-red (NIR) detection technology used by recycling depots. Colour Tone responded to this challenge by developing an alternative detectable infra-red detectable (IRR) colourant that enabled black plastics to be visible for NIR sorting.
 
Luxus has since as part of a new consortium with industry partners Polykemi and One51 gained a £1.29m investment from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to advance further the development of this novel IRR colourant for both black and coloured plastics waste.

The commercialisation project known as NIRSort, will develop a range of IRR colourants that will be tested in numerous applications beyond black food packaging, these include automotive plastics components and consumer durables such as home appliances.

The aim is that the IRR colourants will be specified by manufacturers for new products, but at the ‘end of life’ these same products can be easily separated into individual plastic polymer streams via automatic NIR sorting for the first time.

Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus continues: “This project is significant as we believe capturing these valuable plastics waste streams and diverting them into efficient recovery processing is now recognised as key to saving costs and reducing environmental impacts by manufacturers today.”
 
http://www.luxus.co.uk
 
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For further information please contact Sasha Stewart at Straight Talk PR – email: sasha@straighttalkpr.co.uk or tel: 07764 346 896.

Luxus Ltd        
UK leading independent technical plastics compounding and recycling company Luxus has been developing highly specified thermoplastics compounds based on prime and recycled feedstocks for over 50 years. Luxus is a key supplier to the major names in the global auto industry and it was the first and still is the only UK business to achieve approval for its recycled grades in car interior trims.
Luxus also offers specialist ‘closed loop’ and ‘open loop’ recycling services to manage ‘end of life’ post industrial and consumer waste for the retail transit packaging, construction and local authority wheel bin markets.

Luxus Calls For The Auto Industry To Re-Think Its Material Choices
Technical compounder Luxus will be showcasing its high-performance PP based compounds range, able to deliver technical properties to rival some more expensive engineered polymers in demanding auto interior components. All on stand E50 at the Engineering Design Show, 18th-19th October 2017.  

Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus explains: “We believe that modern PP compounds will encourage auto engineers to completely re-think their materials choices. The adoption of advanced additives means that PP based compounds can now be used where previously the technical properties of the application would have demanded costly ‘off the shelf’ engineering polymer.

“The ‘off the shelf’ (unmodified) polymer is currently chosen at the design stage, since it offers a known performance - despite some properties being irrelevant to the application itself.  This means that when cost considerations come into play later, there is an option instead to create a workable, yet more economic PP compound that is tailor-made to component specifications.

“Modern high-performance PP compounds therefore, can create a superior product compared to the individual components in the typical polymer mix. A profit opportunity that the automotive industry is only just beginning to realize.”

The industry’s need to satisfy increasing targets set by ‘end-of-life’ vehicle (ELV), producer responsibility regulations are also being addressed by Luxus. The compounder has recently secured £1.29m investment funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation initiative to commercialise a range of novel near-infrared (NIR) detectable colourants for adoption in automotive applications and other markets.

Luxus leads a consortium for the commercialisation project known as NIRSort, with support from fellow Nordic polymer processing partner, Polykemi and global plastics manufacturer One51.

Each year 3.5 million tonnes of polymer are scraped in the UK alone, since black and some other coloured plastics cannot be picked up by recycling sorters. As these products contain carbon black that reflects very little or no radiation rendering it ‘invisible’ to sorting machines in recycling plants.

Adoption of this technology will enable NIR sorting operations to segregate black and coloured plastics they produce from streams to a purity that they will be useable in highly engineered polymers. This will allow manufacturers to meet their obligations, reduce landfill and contribute to lifecycle analysis requirements too.

Finally, Hycolene™ an environmentally positive, advanced lightweight, scratch resistant thermoplastics range developed for Class ‘A’ auto interiors will also be showcased.
The range is low density, while offering up to 60 per cent recycled content with the option for prime grades too. Hycolene™ satisfies the rapid cycle times now set by OEMs and Tier 1 manufacturers while delivering at the same time significant Co2 reduction benefits.

http://www.luxus.co.uk

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For further information please contact Sasha Stewart at Straight Talk PR – email: sasha@straighttalkpr.co.uk or tel: 07764 346 896.

Luxus Ltd        
UK leading independent technical plastics compounding and recycling company Luxus has been developing highly specified thermoplastics compounds based on prime and recycled feedstocks for over 50 years. Luxus is a key supplier to the major names in the global auto industry and it was the first and still is the only UK business to achieve approval for its recycled grades in car interior trims.

Luxus also offers specialist ‘closed loop’ and ‘open loop’ recycling services to manage ‘end of life’ post industrial and consumer waste for the retail transit packaging, construction and local authority wheel bin markets.
 

Luxus Led Consortium Secures £1.29M EU Funding For Novel Near-Infrared Detectable Colourants
UK leading technical compounder Luxus has this month, as part of a new consortium, with fellow Nordic polymer processing partner, Polykemi and global plastics manufacturer One51 secured a £1.29m (€1.47m) investment, co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (under grant agreement No 760642).

The funding supports NIRSort, a new commercialisation project that aims to replace carbon black and many other pigments with a range of novel near-infrared (NIR) detectable alternatives for adoption by Europe’s packaging, automotive and consumer durables manufacturers.

Each year 3.5 million tonnes of polymer are scrapped in the UK alone, since black and some other coloured packaging cannot be picked up by recycling sorters. As these products contain carbon black that reflects very little or no radiation rendering it ‘invisible’ to sorting machines in recycling depots.

This two year project will be led by Luxus in collaboration with global processor Polykemi. Polykemi will participate by formulating, processing and testing materials. The resulting materials will be then further evaluated for use in innovative packaging material via Polykemis subsidary, Scanfill.

The third consortium partner is rigid plastics manufacturer, One51 selected for its injection moulding manufacturing expertise.

Dr Christel Croft, technical director, Luxus, explains: “This pioneering project is based on the previous successful work to identify NIR detectable alternatives to carbon black from specialist additive and masterbatch supplier, Colour Tone whom Luxus acquired earlier this year.

“It aims to develop a range of colourants for polymers that will enable NIR sorting operations to segregate black and coloured plastics from waste streams to a level of purity that they are useable in highly engineered polymers.  Potentially even in our light-weight, high scratch-resistant polypropylene (PP) compounds range, Hycolene™ for example. 
                                                           
“We have defined a programme of development, designed to identify formulations with optimal cost effectiveness in packaging recycling and to extend the technology across to WEEE* and end-of-life vehicle applications, each of which has its own specialist requirements.”

The requirements for sorting and segregation of polymer types within waste streams are intensifying:
·         Extended Producer Responsibility (ERP) regulations - increasing the responsibility for the supply side to identify the materials they provide into commercial streams; extending this responsibility through to the point of recycling. 
·         Stringent recycling targets are forcing recyclers to process increasingly difficult materials that they could formerly lose as scrap.
·         Increased volumes and high labour costs are moving the industry to reduce manual segregation and increase shredding; this requires more sorting facilities so cost becomes an issue.
 
According to the ERP regulations, ‘obligated businesses including retailers, brand owners, packaging convertors and fillers are responsible for obtaining evidence that plastics packaging recycling has taken place’. The routine failure of these plastics to be identified and recycled presents an urgent problem for producer industries in their efforts to comply.

The most immediate market need is for food packaging, which typically has a three to 12 month cycle from ‘make-to-waste’. While waste from consumer durables goods (WEEE) however, has a mean-life of five years and ‘end-of-life’ automotive vehicles (ELV) 13 years, both also require solutions to prevent the continued build-up of potentially unrecoverable polymers.

Dr Christel Croft, continues: “Our market strategy is based therefore, on a continuous positive development cycle or a ‘circular economy’ approach. This is where the packaging industry will use virgin detectable polymer to make its packaging and this with its product life of under a year, is recycled into high quality engineered plastics for the manufacturer of automotive and consumer durables to use - without waiting for returns from their own ‘end-of-life’ materials.”

Black plastics alone represent around five per cent of packaging (one million tonnes) and 30 per cent of WEEE* and vehicle polymers (two million tonnes), none of which can be recycled. A further million tonnes of coloured waste containing carbon black is also lost to landfill or incineration in the UK each year. 

*WEEE – waste electrical and electronic equipment directive and *EOLV – end of life vehicles directive
Supporting image – Black PET food trays featuring the novel near-infrared detectable colourant.
 

Luxus Acquires Colour Tone Masterbatch
Technical plastics compounder Luxus has expanded its operations with the recent acquisition of the South Wales based Colour Tone Masterbatch Ltd.
 
Colour Tone Masterbatch currently employs 50 staff with a turnover of £5m. This innovative additive manufacturer focuses on the delivery of high quality service and bespoke colours, in universal, commodity and engineered polymers, as well as custom additive blends.
 
The acquisition will enable a strategic realignment of the businesses allied with improvements in production capabilities at its site in Bedwas Caerphilly. Tony Gaukroger remains as a non-stock holding Director and the company will continue to operate autonomously as before.
 
Peter Atterby, managing director, Luxus, comments: “We are delighted that Colour Tone Masterbatch is now a part of Luxus. This strategic investment is a natural progression of our 20 year working relationship. It will enable us to significantly enhance our offering to deliver highly engineered coloured polymers that our global client base requires, providing the strongest possible market position."
 
In recent years, Colour Tone Masterbatch was selected to support a WRAP funded project that aimed to develop the materials technology required to substitute carbon black pigment commonly used in black food packaging with infra-red reflection (IRR) black pigment. Since recycling sorting systems are unable to detect black carbon as it reflects little or no light at all. This results in over one billion black plastic trays being sent to landfill or incinerated in the UK each year.
 
Peter Atterby continues: “The project validated that IRR pigments could allow near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to sort black plastic packaging waste. They reproduced as near as possible the shade and opacity of carbon black, instead of the less commercial ‘brown black’ achieved in previous trials proving that materials technology can deliver a solution to this serious landfill issue.
 
“We now have the opportunity to capitalise on the technological synergies in both companies. Since the original NIR project, a new masterbatch with the same IRR pigment has been devised for numerous applications including the prevention of heat build-up for example. This provides the opportunity to shape the technical properties of thermoplastics used for auto interior components including steering wheels, seats and instrument panels for example.                              
 
“Since the masterbatch is NIR detectable too, another key advantage is that it can positively contribute to automakers’ ‘end of life’ requirements as the black plastic can be easily identified for sorting at a recycling facility. This means that in the future Luxus high performance engineered polymers such as the ‘next generation’ Hycolene™ thermoplastics range may be available in an NIR detectable version.”
 
This is just one of the opportunities this strategic acquisition will make possible. By combining the technical strengths of the two companies it will result in more innovative new products to cater for emerging market and client needs.
 
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Supporting image: From left to right – Peter Atterby, Managing Director, Luxus and Tony Gaukroger, Director, Colour Tone Masterbatch
For further information please contact Sasha Stewart at Straight Talk PR – email: sasha@straighttalkpr.co.uk or tel: 07764 346 896.

Luxus Ltd        
UK leading independent technical plastics recycling and compounding company Luxus has been developing highly specified thermoplastics compounds based on prime and recycled feedstocks for over 50 years. Luxus is a key supplier to the major names in the global auto industry and it was the first and still is the only UK business to achieve approval for its recycled grades in car interior trims.
Luxus also offers specialist ‘closed loop’ and ‘open loop’ recycling services to manage ‘end of life’ post industrial and consumer waste for the retail transit packaging, construction and local authority wheel bin markets.