Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019 - 18

ireland

›› Continued from page 17

Smaller parts mean lower logistics costs, ideal for the Irish market
In the end, the company could not reliably source the required 30,000 tonnes
of recyclate each year to keep the plants
running. Concannon says that the company now makes more off renting the
land than could have been made from
recycling.
Going back to Ireland, Louis Goor reports that a number of recyclers are now
setting up sites around the country. That
story is picked up by Gearoid Clarke: "Ireland is like the UK, a lot of mixed waste.
But people have to remember that while
enquiries about sustainable packaging
have spiked, that doesn't get rid of the
waste stream."
Goor notes that in one instance, a contact lens producer based in Limerick had
started recycling the two billion blister
packs used to deliver the lenses. The highgrade polymer went to regrind and then
went on to be used in cosmetics products,
such as roll-on deodorant balls.
"We're involved in injection moulding
the packaging," says Goor. "We delivered

marine navigation buoys produced by JFC

WWW.PRW.COM | May/june 2019

the blenders the company is using to process the regrind. We're involved all the
way down the line."
Martin Brickland, sales director at JL
Goor Materials, points out that Ireland
has much the same issues with recycling
as any other market. "Looking back, films
were made from a monolayer product
with just one or two additives. Now they
can have seven layers with three additives in each. How do you separate those
products? They have great performance,
but how do you get them back into the
system?"
While these are obviously excellent
products which help to extend food shelf
life and reduce wastage, he says there's an
argument for saying the technology has
come too far and needs to be dialled back
so as to support ease of recycling. "I don't
know if companies can do that, go back
to where they were 10 years ago. That's a
challenge for the industry," he says.

Low tonnage market

Louis Goor says that the Irish market
represents total annual injection moulding machine sales of about 100 units. Of
these, the overwhelming majority are 100to 250-tonne examples.
"Most of the products produced in
Ireland aren't that large, so our customers don't need big tonnage," he says.
"You have to remember where we are.
We're an island, off an island [the UK],
off mainland Europe. Big parts are difficult to ship, so healthcare suits the environment."
Goor continues by saying that plastics
practitioners in Ireland have learned to
make the geography and related logistics work for them. In one case, a plastics
company was producing small plastic
boxes for Tic Tacs, the small mints. They
saved money by moving product out of
the country using shipping crates which
would have otherwise been returning
empty to the UK.
"That was the key to their business
model," Goor says with a smile. "They did
very well."

http://WWW.PRW.COM

Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019