Extrusion International 2-2018

22 Extrusion International 2/2018 EXTRUSION TECHNOLOGY – CASE STUDY Innovative Production of PET Strapping Tapes made of Bottle Flakes In the course of further capacity ex- pansion, the Arabian company pur- chased a new production line for the manufacture of PET strapping tapes made of 100 % non-dried post-con- sumer bottle flakes. Further, the line CONSENT Plastic, a company of the Arabian CONSENT GROUPwhichwas founded in 1975, is the leading producer of strapping tapes and PET flakes in the Middle East. Consent Plastic produces his own flakes out of collected PET bottles and uses these flakes to manufacture polyester strapping tapes with a high tensile strength. These tapes are sold also to countries beyond the Middle East. A wide range of high- quality polyester tapes are offered under the trademark PETBAND ® PET tapes produced by Consent can process shredded preforms and shredded straps or a mixture out of these materials. It was the avoidance of the time and energy intensive drying and crys- tallisation of the PET flakes which convinced Consent Plastic of the Gneuss MRS extruder. Compared to Consent’s previous production line including a single-screw extruder, crystallisation and drying processing steps, the footprint of the line could be reduced by 12 % and the energy requirement by 20 to 25 %. Further, the strapping tape producedwith the MRS extrusion line is of much better quality in terms of tensile strength, stretch and splitting. This is a result of the intensive mixing effect of the MRS in the degassing section and the Maheshwar Akkala standing in front of the new line