Starlinger post-consumer HDPE and PP recycling line, installed at the recycling facility of Tanrıkulu, one of the Türkiye’s recycling companies, in Başiskele, Kocaeli Province, took up operation mid-September 2022. With currently ten plastics recycling and manufacturing plants in various parts of Kocaeli in Türkiye, Tanrıkulu supplies the produced regranulate to the Turkish plastic product manufacturing industry. While the recycled polypropylene is used mainly to produce automobile plastic parts, furniture, toys and other injection moulding products, as well as for pallets, buckets or packaging films; the recycled polyethylene is used for pipes, bottles, plastic bags, and similar products.
Featuring Starlinger’s special high-vacuum degassing unit, the recoSTAR dynamic 215 C-VAC has a production capacity of two tonnes of high-quality plastic pellets per hour. The line is equipped with a SMART feeder which ensures ideal material preparation prior to extrusion, effectively drying and homogenising the input material, processing post-consumer HDPE and PP bottle flakes.
Starlinger Recycling Technology Commercial Head Paul Niedl said the Starlinger recoSTAR dynamic recycling lines have been designed with the focus on processing contaminated and highly humid post-consumer plastic waste. Niedl explained: “The elaborate construction of the SMART feeder allows the recycling of materials with higher levels of humidity. In combination with Starlinger’s Dynamic Automation Package which regulates the ideal operating point, it achieves a significant output increase.” The specially developed C-VAC degassing unit with its modern cascade setup takes care of volatile contaminants after the main extruder, effectively removing them by expanding the melt surface by 300%.
“Starlinger helps us to achieve the best product quality at favourable costs”
Tanrıkulu Group of Companies General Manager İzzet Tanrıkulu stated that at the company, they try to improve themselves at every opportunity they get. Saying, for that, they continuously upgrade their production equipment, Tanrıkulu explained the process as follows: “To ensure best regranulate quality, the post-consumer input material passes metal detectors and filtration systems before being washed and sorted. The excellent vacuum degassing capacity of the Starlinger line combined with its high production output helps us to achieve best product quality at favourable costs, ensuring continuous supply of high-quality PP and PE regranulate to our customers.”
Tanrıkulu started out in 1989 in Istanbul, recycling paper, glass and metal waste. The company began to produce regranulate from plastic waste in 2006 and diversified by adding a facility for the production of PET sheet in 2014. Since then, Tanrıkulu has become one of Türkiye’s leading plastics recycling enterprises and exports 50% of its PET sheet products to overseas markets. Its plastics recycling capacity doubled after opening the İzpack PET packaging production facility in 2018 and installing automatic plastic sorting systems in 2019.
