What is it?
Plastic chunks/lumps (by-product) composed of PP + Talc and CaCO3 or PP + Glass Fibers generated during Gorenje's injection moulding changes.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
The starting point. Initially treated as waste, these residues enter the recycling process to become secondary raw materials.
What is it?
High-tech separation of waste using magnetic separators and NIR (Near-Infrared) spectrometers.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Led by Omaplast. Contributions from SMEs
ROVIMATICA
ISR
Plast’tri
What is it?
A mechanical conveyor system integrated with high-tech separation sensors, such as magnetic separators and NIR spectrometer cameras.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Acts as the initial entry point, introducing the discarded plastic "cakes" into the recycling line and facilitating the removal of metals and impurities before the material reaches the heavy-duty shredder.
What is it?
Once they have passed through the initial sorting phase, the material is ready for the next phase. All metals and other contaminants have been successfully removed using magnetic separators and NIR spectrometers to ensure virgin-plastic quality.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
This clean, impurity-free plastic stream is now ready to proceed to the mechanical size reduction phase. It will be fed directly into the heavy-duty shredder and fine grinding mill to be transformed into uniform regrind fractions.
What is it?
The mechanical size reduction of the purified plastic waste. A heavy-duty shredder first cuts the large plastic "cakes" into coarse flakes, which then pass into a fine grinding mill to be reduced into a clean, precise, and uniform particle size.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
This critical mechanical step transforms the bulky industrial waste into uniform regrind fractions. Achieving this exact, consistent size is essential to ensure smooth dosing, melting, and chemical bonding during the subsequent compounding and extrusion phases.
Contributions from SMEs:
WR KNIVES
EKSTERA & ADDITIO
What is it?
A heavy-duty machine featuring a steel frame and rotating knives.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Used for the initial, coarse size reduction of large plastic waste parts (cakes) into smaller flakes.
What is it?
A machine with a cutting rotor, fixed knives, and screens.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Performs secondary size reduction, grinding plastic flakes into a uniform particle size for compounding.
What is it?
Secondary raw materials obtained by the mechanical shredding and milling of the plastic production waste.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Used as the clean input material for compounding and direct reprocessing.
What is it?
Large storage units that hold the finely ground, clean, and uniform plastic fractions.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Located after the fine grinding process, these silos safely store the pure secondary raw material until it is ready to be dosed and fed into the compounding and mixing phase.
What is it?
A fine grey powder made of processed, post-consumer lignocellulosic materials (like recycled wood/plants).
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Blended with the recycled plastic in the melt phase to act as a sustainable reinforcement filler, improving stiffness and stability.
What is it?
A functionalised polypropylene wax.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Added during extrusion to act as a compatibilizer, improving the chemical adhesion between the recycled plastic and the natural waste fibres.
What is it?
The chemical and mechanical process of bonding a recycled plastic matrix with natural cellulose fibres.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Dramatically increases the structural strength of the recycled material. Led by TECOS.
What is it?
Rigorous chemical, mechanical, and eco-design testing (impact, shrinkage, heat resistance).
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Ensures the new bioplastic formulation meets the highest industrial standards. Led by UJA, Ecocastulum and TECOS.
What is it?
A specialised twin-screw extrusion system with heating zones and dosing units.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
The core mixer where recycled plastics, natural fibres, and coupling agents are melted and blended together.
What is it?
A water-based cooling system designed to solidify the molten plastic strands exiting the extrusion machine.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Immediately after the extrusion phase, the molten reinforced bioplastic strands enter this bath to cool down and solidify rapidly. This step stabilizes the material's structure so that it can be properly cut.
What is it?
Composite filaments produced by extrusion.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
The structural, value-added composite form before being cut into final pellets.
What is it?
A specialised cutting machine that slices the cooled, solid plastic strands into small, uniform pellets (granulate)
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Located right after the cooling pool, this machine cuts the continuous solid strands to form the final pellets (high-performance composite granulate). This ensures the material has the perfect format and size for subsequent vacuum drying and injection moulding.
What is it?
The final recycled polypropylene granulate reinforced with post-consumer waste fibres.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
The final raw material ready to be injected into standard moulds to produce solid plastic parts (like the household appliance crates).
What is it?
A sealed drying system that removes moisture under reduced pressure.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Ensures the composite granulate is completely dry before moulding to prevent moisture-related defects.
What is it?
The final industrial scale-up, injecting highly viscous second-life materials into standard moulds.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Proves that 100% recycled, reinforced bioplastics can be successfully mass-produced. Led by Gorenje
What is it?
Real-time data acquisition using virtual sensors, smart rheological nozzles, and 3D simulation software.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Anticipates material viscosity, simulates the injection process, and predicts manufacturing faults before they happen. Led by SISE and SIMCON
Contribution from SMEs:
LOGIX
What is it?
A massive machine with an injection unit, clamping unit, and hydraulic/electric drives.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
Injects the molten, reinforced bioplastic into a mould to mass-produce the final products.
What is it?
Solid plastic parts, such as mono-material modular packaging containers (crates) and high-quality household appliance components, manufactured entirely from the newly formulated reinforced bioplastic composite.
Role in the INCIRCULAR Process:
This is the ultimate output of the INCIRCULAR industrial symbiosis loop. The reinforced composite pellets are injected into moulds at the Gorenje pilot plant to mass-produce these durable, 100% mechanically recyclable consumer goods.
Learn more about our replicators.
At INCIRCULAR we take the protection of your personal data very seriously. Our purpose is to protect the privacy of the data you provide us and to comply with the current regulations on the protection of personal data.
In compliance with the Act 3/2018 of 5 December on the Protection of Personal Data and Guarantee of Digital Rights transposing Regulation (EU) 2016/679, we inform you of the following information about our privacy and data protection policy:
The organization responsible of your data is TECOS – Slovenian Tool and Die Development Centre. This is a Research and Technology Organisation located in Celje, Slovenia.
The legal basis for the treatment of your data is the consent of the data subject under article 6.1 a) of the Regulation, as well as the legitimate interest of the data controller under article 6.1 f) of the Regulation.
The data we request from you are adequate, relevant and strictly necessary and in no case are you obliged to provide them to us, but their non-communication may affect the purpose of the service or the impossibility of providing it.
Your data will be kept for the time required for the proper provision of the service offered, as well as to meet the responsibilities that may arise from it and any other legal requirement.
While processing your data, TECOS may share your data with:
On Projects Advising SL, as web management and maintenance service providers.
The controller retains the right to restrict the rights set forth in Article 23 of the EU Regulation, if such restriction is provided to safeguard, in particular fundamental rights and freedoms and is a necessary and proportionate measure.
If any interested party considers that their data are not being treated correctly, they can send their complaints to the following e-mail address; info@tecos.si.
The data subject declares to have acquired all this information.
A cookie is a file that is downloaded and executed on your computer, phone, or mobile device when you access certain web pages. Cookies allow a website, among other things, to store and retrieve information about user’s browsing habits and recognize the user depending on the information they contain and the way they use their computer.
Cookies do not harm your computer and are necessary to facilitate navigation.
Cookies are necessary for our website to work properly. The purpose of our cookies is to improve the user’s browsing experience. They can be used to remember your preferences (language, country, etc.) during navigation and on future visits.
The information collected in the Cookies also allows us to improve the website and adapt it to the individual interests of users, speed up searches, etc.
Analysis Cookies: These, if they are used properly by us or by third parties, allow us to quantify the number of users and thus perform the measurement and statistical analysis regarding the users’ usage of our service.
Advertising Cookies: These, if they are used properly by us or by third parties, allow us to manage as effectively as possible the supply of advertising space on the website, adapting the content of the advertisement to the content of the service requested or to the use you make of our website.
Our cookies do not store information about your personal identification, address, password, credit or debit card details, etc.
The information stored in the website’s cookies is used exclusively by us, apart from those identified below as “third party cookies”, which are used and managed by external entities to provide us with services to improve our own services and the user’s experience when browsing our website.
Third party cookies are mainly used to obtain statistics and to guarantee the payment operations are carried out.
Yes, firstly, you must disable cookies in your browser and, secondly, delete the cookies stored in your browser associated with this website.
You can restrict, block, or delete cookies from this website at any time by modifying your browser settings. This setting is different for each browser. For more details on the configuration of cookies in your browser, please consult your browser’s “Help” menu.
It is possible that some of the website’s features may no longer work if you disable cookies.
These Cookies are used to identify the user during the session, prevent the user from having to repeat authentication processes on the website, speed up some website processes, remember selections made during the session or on subsequent accesses, remember pages already visited, etc.
| COOKIES | PURPOSE | DURATION | MANAGEMENT |
|---|---|---|---|
|
User identification |
They are used to identify and authenticate the user. They also contain technical data from the user session, such as connection timeout, session identifier, etc. |
Session |
INCIRCULAR |
|
Session identification |
They identify the user’s http session. They are common in all web applications to identify requests from a user’s session. |
Session |
INCIRCULAR |
|
Navigation status |
They help identify the user’s browsing status (login, first page, first access, scroll status, voting status, etc.). |
Session |
INCIRCULAR |
These Cookies obtain generic information about users’ accesses to the website (not the content of the same) to subsequently provide us with information about these accesses for statistical purposes.
| COOKIES | PURPOSE | DURATION | MANAGEMENT |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Google Analytics (__utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmd, __utmv, __utmz, _ga…) |
They allow website statistic’s tracking through the Google Analytics tool, which is a service provided by Google to obtain information about user access to websites. Some of the data stored is: number of times a user visits the website, dates of the user’s first and last visit, duration of visits, from which page the user accessed the website, which search engine was used or which link was clicked, from which part of the world the user accessed the website, etc. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website will be directly transmitted and stored by Google Inc (a company located in United States). The configuration of these cookies is predetermined by the service offered by Google, so we suggest you consult the Google Analytics privacy page, for more information on the cookies it uses and how to disable them (keep in mind that we are not responsible for the content and accuracy of third-party websites). |
Persistent |
Third Parties |