Bagman recycles BOPP, finds some applications

BAGMAN of East London has entered into one of the more unusual recycling ventures of late, the reprocessing of bioriented polypropylene film. Few, if any, have been involved in reprocessing BOPP, mainly originating from film scrap, which is widely used (chip, biscuit and other packets) and virtually all of which goes to landfill.

But Bagman boss Wouter de Lange, who’s not scared of a technical challenge, was keeping mum about the project. After some prodding, however, he relented.

“BOPP film printed on its own does not work due to the gaseous content created by the printing. We have to run a blend with another PP.

“The final product was used for injection moulding and passed the test with flying colours. We have a second trial run for alternative pending and are awaiting the outcome,” said Wouter.

All the BOPP material being run at the moment is ‘pre-consumer’. Bagman has not yet trialled co-ex foiled BOPP (silver coated) but Wouter said it’s “one step at a time” for now.

“One problem we have to overcome is to pre-shred the BOPP fast enough and cost efficiently to prepare the stock for blending and finally pelletizing. The second hurdle we have to cross is to source sufficient PP for blending purposes. Rome was not built in a day, just watch and see.”