Business Wire

Award-winning British Recycling Project, NEXTLOOPP, Hits Bullseye in Plastics Recycling Ahead of COP26

20.10.2021 12:30:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release

Share

NEXTLOOPP, the groundbreaking project by Nextek Limited, that recently won the overall award for ‘Best Sustainable Packaging Innovation’ at Packaging Europe’s Sustainability Awards - https://packagingeurope.com/sustainability-awards-2021-winners-revealed/ has revealed the results of its highly successful tracer-based sorting trials held at TOMRA (Germany) in September 2021.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211020005464/en/

To view this piece of content from mms.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

NEXTLOOPP participants in the global project to close the loop on food-grade Polypropylene (Graphic: Business Wire)

The trials, to specifically sort food-grade plastic packaging waste, achieved a resounding 99.9% sorting purity at maximum production speed.

This demonstrates that Nextek’s unique technology efficiently differentiates food packaging from non-food packaging to meet the standards required by the Food Standards Authorities in the UK and EU. Being able to identify and sort any number of pack variants from bleach bottles to milk bottles in any plastic type is a world-first that will transform the way we recycle the prolific volume of single-use post-consumer food packaging waste back into circular applications.

This announcement marks 12 months of NEXTLOOPP’s programme to close the loop on food-grade Polypropylene (FGPP), which is the biggest plastic fraction in the FMCG sector. In the UK alone, 210,000 tonnes of FGPP packaging is used in pots, tubs, trays and films each year, and this cutting-edge innovation creates the opportunity to recycle Polypropylene (PP) back into food packaging.

This also heralds a new era in the plastics packaging recycling industry and the validation of NEXTLOOPP’s PolyPRISMTM ‘plug-and-play’ marker system, as used on TOMRA’s sorting equipment for commercial purposes.

Sorting plastic waste into polymer types is the first of three vital steps needed to close the loop on PP and create a global low carbon economy. The next step requires splitting the plastic packaging into food and non-food fractions. The final step involves NEXTLOOPP’s patented decontamination process, PPristineTM, which unlocks the markets to food packaging. Recycling 63,000 tonnes of PP per annum would save a minimum estimated 105,600 tonnes in CO2 emissions in the UK each year.

“During recent trials held at our TOMRA Test Centre we achieved very promising results on all Polypropylene 3D samples in all test runs with state-of-the-art NIR/VIS technology. We exceeded the required 95% purity for food-grade in each test run. The next important milestones will be a field demonstration as well as demonstrating chemical compliance with food-grade regulation” said Ralph Uepping, Technical Director at TOMRA.

Professor Edward Kosior, founder of Nextek, believes the NEXTLOOPP project is the catalyst to transform current FGrPP recycling and become the next food-grade recycling success story. PET was first and now it’s the turn of PP.

About Nextek Ltd

Nextek is a global sustainability consultancy that provides strategic advice to regional and multi-national organisations and recycling companies. Launched in 2004, Nextek researches and develops innovative strategies and processes within the recycling ecosystem – from designing recycling plants to developing ground-breaking projects for governments and major organisations. Nextek launched NEXTLOOPP, a two-year 37-strong project, to close the loop on food-grade recycled Polypropylene (rPP). This project incorporates unique technological breakthroughs that include innovative sorting and cutting-edge decontamination technologies.

https://www.nextek.org/

https://www.nextloopp.com

About Tomra

TOMRA is a Norwegian multinational corporation that manufactures collection and sorting products, such as reverse vending machines for the food, recycling and mining industries. TOMRA is the market leader in its industry with over 100,000 installations in 80+ markets worldwide. Its Recycling Division has pioneered the automation of waste sorting.

https://www.tomra.com/

To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Contact information

Janine Wood
Email: janinewood@nexteklimited.com
Tel: +44 (0)7831582659

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Bentley Systems Announces Winners of the 2026 Year in Infrastructure Awards7.10.2026 20:55:00 EEST | Press release

(The Bentley Systems 2026 Year in Infrastructure Event) – Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Nasdaq: BSY), the infrastructure engineering software company, today announced the winners of the 2026 Year in Infrastructure Awards. For more than 20 years, the awards have honored the extraordinary work of infrastructure professionals and their innovative use of Bentley software to improve how infrastructure is designed, built, and operated. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261007964087/en/ Bentley Systems announced the winners of the 2026 Year in Infrastructure Awards on October 7, 2026 (Photo courtesy of Bentley Systems) In 2026, over 300 projects were nominated by organizations in 53 countries. Winners were selected across 12 categories spanning the infrastructure lifecycle, industries, and disciplines by a panel of independent judges during the Bentley Systems 2026 Year in Infrastructure Event, held October 6-7 in Sin

Day One Strategy Founders Recognised in The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 20267.10.2026 20:00:00 EEST | Press release

Hannah Mann and Abigail Stuart, Co-Founders of Day One Strategy have been recognised as one of The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2026. The programme was created by private equity investor LDC, part of Lloyds Banking Group, in partnership with The Times. Since 2018, it has celebrated the ambition and achievements of hundreds of exceptional entrepreneurs. This year The LDC Top 50 attracted more than 620 nominations from across the UK, highlighting the depth of ambition among leaders building successful businesses in every region and sector. The leaders featured are driven by an appetite for growth that is helping to build stronger, more sustainable businesses and a more competitive UK economy. They are expanding internationally, developing new products and services, challenging established markets and investing in their people. Together, their businesses generate £1.4bn in annual revenues and employ almost 8,500 people. Headquartered in 55 towns and cities, they demonstr

TestMu AI Adds Evidence Packs to Kane CLI, Turning Every AI Test Run into One Portable, Shareable File7.10.2026 17:29:00 EEST | Press release

TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest), the Full Stack Agentic AI Quality Engineering platform, announced evidence packs for Kane CLI, its terminal-first tool for natural language browser and mobile app testing. Every Kane CLI run now produces one sealed .evidence file that holds the complete record of what the AI agent was asked to do, what it did at each step, and what happened. Kane CLI launched in April 2026, giving developers and AI coding agents a way to run tests on real browsers and mobile apps from the terminal, in plain English, with a clear pass-or-fail verdict. Since launch, it has added AI-powered test case generation and the Assurance Lifecycle, which ties tests back to requirement documents. Evidence packs are the next step: a full record of every run. As AI agents write and run more tests, engineering teams need a clear answer to a simple question: what exactly did the agent do, and why did the run pass or fail? That proof is often spread across screenshots, log folders, and d

Medisca and EUROAPI Form Strategic Partnership to Strengthen API Access for Pharmaceutical Compounding7.10.2026 17:07:00 EEST | Press release

Medisca and EUROAPI have formed a strategic partnership focused on expanding API access for pharmaceutical compounding, creating differentiated access in North America and establishing a broader framework for international growth and peptide collaboration. For more than three decades, Medisca has built its business around the evolving needs of pharmaceutical compounders. That starts with the products it chooses to bring to market but extends much further to the manufacturers behind them, the documentation and technical information supporting them, and the quality systems that carry those products through to the customer. The partnership with EUROAPI advances that approach. Under the new strategic partnership, Medisca becomes EUROAPI’s first strategic distribution partner focused on bringing its European-manufactured APIs to the North American compounding market. The collaboration includes exclusive supply arrangements for selected APIs and creates a framework to expand the offering ove

iQmetrix Launches Vendor Managed Inventory Integration with Valor Communication7.10.2026 17:00:00 EEST | Press release

iQmetrix, the global provider of Intelligent Commerce Operating Systems for telecom, is launching a Vendor Managed Inventory integration with Valor Communication, a factory-direct wireless accessory manufacturer and distributor serving carriers, retailers, and dealers since 1997. Built into the iQmetrix Intelligent Commerce Operating System, the integration connects Valor's assortment directly to the platform telecom retailers already run their business on – so replenishment runs on real sell-through data instead of guesswork, and approved accessories move from Valor's floor to the peg without manual reordering. The integration will be available to retailers across the iQmetrix client base. The addition of Valor Communication marks another step in the rapid expansion of the iQmetrix Partner Ecosystem, bringing clients a growing network of integrated partners that work natively inside the platform they already run their business on. This press release features multimedia. View the full

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye