Technological watch

At the Ecomondo fair (Rimini, Italy, October 26-29), Aliplast, a subsidiary of Hera Group, has relaunched its commitment to the circular economy. The company aims at increasing the production of recycled plastic by 150% within 2030. With about 100 thousand tons of polymers recycled every year, Aliplast continues to expand its range of recycled plastics and has announced the construction of a new technologically advanced plant in Modena for the recycling of rigid plastics.

Thanks to excellent plant that, in Italy and abroad, have made it possible to produce up to 100 thousand tons/year of recycled plastic, Aliplast today is able to meet the requirements of sectors with particularly high standards, such as food and cosmetics, delivering polymers of various kinds (mainly PET and PE) whose physical-chemical properties, aesthetic quality, safety and performance, are absolutely comparable to those of "virgin" materials.

Thanks to a partnership with NextChem - a company of the Maire Tecnimont Group - Aliplast will build a plant for the recycling of rigid plastics, fundamental for sectors with high quality standards, ranging from consumer electronics to motor vehicles. The new plant will be built in Modena near the existing waste-to-energy plant and the wastewater treatment plant, both managed by the Hera Group, as a result creating a real circular economy district dedicated to the recovery and regeneration of materials that are also very different from each other.

The new plant will be able to produce up to 30 thousand tons of high-quality recycled polymers from rigid plastic waste, which are among the most difficult to recycle effectively. To achieve all this, Aliplast will develop an upcycling process aimed at raising the quality of the waste polymers and thus achieving high levels of purity, quality and chemical-physical performance. In this way, the recycled plastics leaving the plant will also be able to meet those needs that until now were met almost exclusively by virgin polymers. A first step, therefore, to allow even industries with a significant environmental impact to increase their sustainability.

The plant, which, thanks to Herambiente, will draw on green energy sources for its operation, will guarantee high safety standards and have innovative features such as, for example, extensive process automation and digitalization with a view to data analytics, with further positive effects in terms of energy efficiency and emission containment.

Aliplast provides a key contribution to the sustainable development strategy that the Hera Group has been developing over the years, within which the multi-utility company is now pursuing 11 of the 17 sustainable development goals indicated by the United Nations. Thanks to Aliplast, the Hera Group is among the 250 companies from all over the world to have signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, a programme for the reduction of plastic pollution drawn by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one of the most important and prestigious global networks of the circular economy.