PB Solutions will complete and commission a new development and production facility with a focus on dry mechanical processing with subsequent selective density separation of plastic waste at its headquarters near Stuttgart in spring 2023. Around two million euros will be invested in new plant technology for the annual recycling of up to 6,000 tonnes of production waste. In total, more than ten new jobs will be created.
The dynamically growing PB Group covers the entire value chain in high-quality plastics recycling with about 40 employees at locations throughout Germany – from analytics and consulting to trading in secondary raw materials to process development and contract separation.
Civil engineering work began in August 2022 on the construction of a new office building – the central administration of the PB Group – as well as a 2.000 sqm production hall, in which the existing technologies of the other sites are used with complementary innovations in processing and process technology and form the heart of state-of-the-art plant engineering. The generated process sequences determine the state of the art. Production and process control (quality assurance) is carried out in the in-house laboratory, which can draw on the experience of three decades. The focus of recycling is on engineering plastics and composite plastics, primarily from the toy, medical technology and automotive industries, as well as pure thermoplastic fractions and plastic-metal composites.
The construction of the intelligently controlled production facility on a commercial area of 6,000 m² in Schömberg-Langenbrand is being carried out according to the KFW 55 energy efficiency standard and demonstrates its sustainable character not only through a wooden construction or the use of rainwater: a regenerative energy supply through photovoltaic systems with a connected load of 400 kWp as well as an industrial battery storage system of 240 kWh will cover most of the electricity demand; only green energy will be purchased from third-party suppliers. Geothermal heat generation is made possible by geothermal energy. E-technologies in the vehicle fleet and KNX-controlled building automation will also be used to ensure climate-neutral operation.
Patrick Blessing, Managing Director of the PB Group, sees the establishment of a new production site as an important step towards securing the prosperity of a community not only through a sustainable circular economy but also by creating jobs and training places. “At the same time, we are expanding our production capacities to meet the significantly increased demand for high-quality processing and separation of two- and multi-component mixtures. In Langenbrand, we will be able to process complex production waste into high-purity, quality-tested reproducible secondary plastics for their reuse in the future.”
Andreas Mattauch, technical manager of the PB Group, underlines the importance of the high qualitative standards for the recovery and quality of the separated plastics (purity and yield): “The PB Group stands out above all due to the high-quality secondary raw materials it produces and its technical know-how. In order to increase the acceptance of recyclates in the processing industries and to continuously increase the use of secondary raw materials, we must not only convince with excellent products, but also design the processing procedure in such a way that a permanently high quality can be monitored and produced.”
Carsten Schipper, Sales Manager of the PB Group, emphasises: “With the site in Langenbrand, we are also complementing our processing capacities for post-industrial material in Europe in quantitative terms. Through our German locations in Berlin, Nordhausen and Bötzingen as well as in Krakow, Poland, the PB Group also has a special role geographically with regard to the important German market.”
The ecological aspect of reintegrating post-industrial and post-consumer waste into the economic cycle as a source of raw materials is undisputed, but it also requires the constant development of methodological know-how for recycling plastics into high-quality, reproducible recyclates as well as ecological and economic processing technologies. The planned quantities of plastic waste processed at the new site can save up to 20,000 tonnes of CO² per year.