South African company Wang on Fibres, which is headquartered in Krugersdorp, specializes in the manufacturing of durable polypropylene packaging and woven plastic bags, which are also polypropylene. The fact that the company now has 400 full-time employees and produces up to 12 million plastic bags every month is an indication of the success it has achieved since it was founded 32 years ago. Its customers range from small businesses to famous brand-name manufacturers in the fields of agriculture, food and mining.

Prompted by its constant growth and production volume, Wang on Fibres decided to integrate recycling into its production process and took a forward-looking approach when deciding which recycling technology to use. An INTAREMA 1007 TVEplus, made by Austrian machine manufacturer Erema, is used to process what is currently clean and lightly printed in-house waste. Lawrence Tong, the CEO of Wang on Fibres, said: "As a business owner, I want to achieve the greatest degree of flexibility possible. We decided to purchase the INTAREMA TVEplus, because, depending on its availability, we will be able to process wetter and heavily printed input materials with it in the future." The proven principle of the TVEplus technology – that is melt filtration upstream of extruder degassing – is often used in combination with powerful triple degassing for hard-to-process materials such as heavily printed input material. Emphasizing how pleased his company is with its decision, Mr. Tong said, "On average, we recycle 110 tonnes of input material a month and the new extruder technology has already proved its value here. In addition to Erema's impressive engineering and machine performance, we are very happy with its service. In Relloy we have found a reliable local partner who enables us to achieve maximum efficiency in our recycling process."

Plastics processing as a business driver in the region

The economic success of Wang on Fibres is accompanied by a special corporate philosophy, that of strengthening South Africa as a business location. Right from the start of its production chain, the company ensures that its raw material is sourced exclusively in South Africa. In turn, the plastic packaging and woven plastic bags enable food and raw materials producers to offer their products to an international market. The company is currently looking into the option of adding the recycling of post-consumer plastic waste to its portfolio. "This would allow us to double our recycling quantity and process a further valuable source of raw materials in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way," Mr. Tong explains.