With the establishment of new production unit worth 2.5 million euro LLC (SIA) Nordic Plast opens the door for manufacturing of new products.
The company Nordic Plast, which is part of Eco Baltia group, produces five various types of pellets. This allows the company to react flexibly to various market situations. Pellets are being used for manufacturing of various products – pipes, industrial tare, waste containers etc. The new product offered by the company is PP Homo pellets made of woven polypropylene bags (so called Big Bags) most frequently used in agriculture. “According to the information at our disposal we are currently the only recycler of Big Bags in the Baltic States and, possibly, in the whole Europe. Our innovation is polymer recycling technology and also the final product – pellets. This is our small, blue ocean, where we can create something unique, unavailable in the nearest vicinity,” tells Dace Samuša, Director of the LLC (SIA) Nordic Plast. The company has applied for the competition Export and Innovation Award 2014 organized by the Ministry of Economics and Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), in two categories - Best Exporter in large/ medium partnership group and Innovative Product – with the polypropylene pellets PP Homo.
Long-time experiments
“Tons of polypropylene bags reach the market every year. This encouraged us to carry out market research back in 2011. We studied availability of this raw material, its recycling opportunities. We came to conclusion that recycling of Big Bags is poorly developed in Europe – the used polypropylene bags were recycled in China and Belarus only,” tells D.Samuša. Realizing that this market niche was still empty, in January 2012 Nordic Plast commenced research cycle of polypropylene bags recycling by performing the first recycling experiments.
Since this raw material is complicated and hard to recycle, the phase of production experiments lasted long. Recycling of this material into secondary raw materials required changes also in the production cycle. Nordic Plast performed various improvements and modified several hubs of hardware by their own efforts, purchasing also new hardware. Appropriate pre-sorting system was also established thus minimizing entry of non-quality and inadequate quality raw material in the recycling. This year, with the establishment of the new production unit with the investments reaching 2.5 million euro, production output has grown one-and-a-half-times – on average from 320 tonnes to 550 tonnes of finished products per month. 96% per cent of the finished products of Nordic Plast are being exported to 12 countries. “Our largest export partners are in France, Czech Republic and Lithuania. We are planning to start exporting to Sweden, Great Britain and Finland in the nearest future. We’ve been cooperating with Israel for half a year, and this is our farthest destination,” reveals D.Samuša.
Purity level
PP Homo pellets make a competitive product in the export market; these pellets are with minimum amount of admixtures and homogeneous composition. Handwork provides additional guarantee of quality, because the raw material is being re-sorted by workers before reaching the production line. “Handwork is irreplaceable in our sector, because our workers separate the raw material from dirt and the types of polypropylene currently unsuitable for recycling. This is the added value to the quality of our pellets. Production of such a high quality and so homogeneous pellets would not be possible in mechanical process,” reveals D.Samuša.
Nordic Plast is not going to rest on the laurels and keeps research process of new polymer material recycling opportunities. Currently work on introduction of two new products in production is in progress. Introduction of one of them into the market is a plan for the nearest future.
By Linda Zalāne
This article was published on the December 1, 2014 in the newspaper “Dienas Bizness”.
