Turkish big bag producer, Prof Sentetik has recently installed Starlinger equipment for woven pp bag and big bag production
Big bags (or FIBCs) are vital to the logistic industry as a lightweight and economical type of packaging for free-flowing bulk goods. Made predominantly from polypropylene (PP), they show a CO2 balance per 1,000 litres of transported goods that is far below that of rigid containers such as drums or octabins.
To meet ever-increasing customer concerns around sustainability, Prof Sentetik has sought to make them more sustainable by adding post-industrial and post-consumer PP waste in the production of various types of big bags.
To support its efforts, the company installed Starlinger equipment for woven PP bag and big bag production, including a Starlinger PP tape production line equipped with the new eqoCLEAN filter system for processing recycled granulate. With this new tape extrusion line, Prof Sentetik produces PP tapes for FIBC fabric with recycled polypropylene (rPP) that meet all the specifications required for heavy-duty packaging applications.
Fahri Şengül, general manager of Prof Sentetik, commented, “Starlinger’s holistic approach to packaging production is very helpful. Being a supplier of both production machinery for woven plastic packaging and plastics recycling equipment, they understand the product cycle of plastic packaging from the beginning right to the end. They know how to produce high-quality recycled plastics, and their woven packaging production equipment is designed for processing virgin as well as recycled input materials, even if they stem from post-consumer plastic waste.”
Prof Sentetik processes in-house production waste and additionally buys recycled PP granulate, produced also from post-consumer plastic packaging waste. “As big bags have to meet special safety standards, the quality of the recycled material plays an important role in tape production,” continued Şengül. “The Starlinger tape extrusion line with the eqoCLEAN filter module ensures that the tapes we produce meet the specifications regarding tensile strength and elongation required for big bags in heavy-duty applications.”
The eqoCLEAN filter module developed by Starlinger takes into account all the requirements for producing high-quality PP tapes with post-consumer recycled PP. It consists of a SPB single-piston power-backflush filter, a melt pump, and a second filter unit, called HS 2.0 filter. The SPB filter has one piston and four cavities for filter screens and can be used for processing polyolefins such as PP or PE.
During the hydraulic power-backflush procedure the line operates at full production speed without interruption of the production process. The regular automatic high-pressure backflushing procedure cleans the filter screens throroughly, increasing their lifetime and reducing machine downtime significantly. The melt pump in combination with the additional HS 2.0 filter, which is positioned directly before the extrusion die, ensure stable production and high operational reliability of the line. It also enables the processing of high shares of CaCO3 and post-consumer recycled PP of 50 % and more.
Following the tape production process, the tapes are wound onto bobbins and turned into big bag fabric on Starlinger’s heavy-duty circular looms. In the last step, the woven fabric is converted to big bags. Properties such as tensile strength, weight and safety factor of Prof Sentetik’s big bags with rPP content meet all required safety standards and are continuously tested using standard testing procedures and certified equipment.
