Extrusion International USA 6-2019

33 Extrusion International 6/2019 Kaskada concentrated more and more on quality. Daniel Nedev said in an interview: “Unfortunately, the incineration of plastics, which is the simplest solu- tion to the waste problem, is still too often used, but this must become an absolute exception because of the associated air pollution, as well as the associated waste of resources. A sim- ilar flaw is the limitation of recycled plastics to the production of garbage bags and other inferior products. We refuse both. Our goal is to prove for polymers. Parallel to the trad- ing business the company gradually stepped into the recycling of poly- mers. The first recycling machines were extruders made in Bulgaria and used mills and shredders from Ger- many. In order to increase the quality of the product, the company made its own developments and improved the machinery and equipment. Since the storage of virgin material and the strongly grown post-consumer plas- tic quantities and regranulates, in- cluding the processing machines ex- ceeded the available space resaerves after a short time, Kostadin Nikolov and Daniel Nedev transferred the operation in 1994 at the current lo- cation in a business park outside the urban area. Step by step into the quality niche Both the virgin and the recycling business grew in the following years. Finally, in all Eastern European coun- tries, including Bulgaria, the major international industrial groups initi- ated an industrial boom by setting up production branches, pushing the use of plastics. This resulted also in increasing amounts of plastics waste, which attracted a growing number of entrepreneurs. In order to differ- entiate itself from this competition, that things can get better and plastic waste can be upcycled into competi- tive, high quality raw materials.” To realize this vision, it took the per- sonal commitment of the company founders and the systematic accu- mulation of experience. The starting point for this were purchase con- tracts with industrial partners for the acceptance and processing of their production waste, which can be re- turned to their production cycle. Kas- kada’s quality strategy began with the treatment of extruded wastes Ther formance ILLIG.de Picture 5: The processed film flakes are pre-dried by the washer to the MAS cascade extrusion line, consisting of conical twin-screw extruder, fed filter and single-screw degassing extruder Picture 4: A meticulous material processing by shredding, washing and drying creates the basis for the Kaskada quality granules. There are several preparation lines in operation