Colour Measurement of Recyclates

The worldwide production of plastic products has been increasing for years and this trend is expected to continue in a near future. At the same time, the amount of plastic waste grows dramatically. With increasing awareness of environmental preservation, plastic recycling is one of the most significant initiatives for our society. Based on the EU resolution, all plastic materials should be recyclable by 2030. The plastic industry has been making extensive effort to develop technologies for reducing plastic waste and better sorting and reusing plastics.
 

Recyclates represents a huge commercial opportunity for the sector in improving products and processes, and in offering customers products that utilise recycled plastics.

Recyclates are usually a mixture of different plastic types, of inhomogeneous colours, contaminated by foreign objects. All this has a significant impact on recyclate's quality and value. Colour is one of the most important factors in this respect.

As a solution provider to the plastic industry, Konica Minolta Measuring Instruments offer customers accurate and traceable solutions for sorting, characterising, and reusing recycled polymers. Our experts can help you establish systems for minimising waste, minimising losses, and improving your tolerances. This can be everything from characterising the colour of inhomogeneous plastic samples or products, to helping companies maintain colour accuracy whilst integrating their own production waste or a percentage of recycled polymers. The appetite for recycled plastics is huge and the possibilities for producing quality products are only just beginning to be explored.

Konica Minolta has a dedicated team of experts responsible for implementing, training, optimising, and customising our computer colour matching and digital colour data platform Colibri®. By leveraging Colibri® Colour Match® and its unique algorithm, customers gain several advantages over traditional colour formulation systems when it comes to recycled materials.

Konica Minolta benchtop spectrophotometers are versatile, accurate, and traceable. By improving accuracy of the colour data for regrind, the industry can improve outcomes and tolerances for the products that they produce.

Konica Minolta group company SPECIM is at the forefront of hyperspectral vision systems, providing the recycling industry with inline solutions for identifying and sorting plastic products of different types and colours. Improving the quality of sorting within the recycling process is a crucial step in improving the possibilities of the recycled product.