Execution time 2023-2024
Plastone supplies the industrial sector with injection moulded plastic parts and products assembled from them. The factories are located in Nurmijärvi, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, and the assembly plant is located in Haapsalu, Estonia. They have a total of about 200 employees.
The plastic raw materials used by Plastone are mainly technical plastics for which no proper recycling system has been established yet. A particular challenge in this respect is that there are numerous different plastic grades with different manufacturing parameters, whose suitability for different applications varies.
Plastone’s factories utilise side streams from the plastics industry. © Plastone
The materials of used products cannot be sensibly recycled in any other way than chemically. This means going back to the elements of plastic, and the processing of special materials starts from the beginning. In this case, the properties that expensive materials already possess cannot be directly utilised.
With mechanical recycling, materials can be reused immediately. However, it requires knowing exactly what the material is and the parts must be clean, which means that collecting material from the field is not an option.
The materials generated as side streams during manufacturing are known and can also be kept clean. The only challenge is to obtain sufficient volumes to make recycling economically viable.
In the PlastLIFE project, Plastone aims to collect side streams from the use of raw materials from several manufacturers to obtain a sufficient amount of material for recycling. For this purpose, we will design a new product for which these collected materials can be used and launch it onto the market.
Further information on the role of Plastone in the PlastLIFE project