Sirmax Adapts Integrated Recycling Approach to US Supply Conditions

In the automotive industry, recycling plastic was a way to cut cost and seen as a quality compromise — something that suppliers might do, but certainly would not advertise. The Italian compounder Sirmax defended its reputation by avoiding recycling entirely.

“Until recent times, we prided ourselves on not using any recycled materials. We were only making prime, because that was what highly technical applications were demanding. Things have changed,” says Lorenzo Ferro, U.S. country manager for Sirmax.

Today, brands (including vehicle brands) are competing to outdo each other for buyers who want the greenest product, making pledges to use sustainable materials like recycled plastics. In the EU, where Sirmax still has its largest footprint, forthcoming changes to the End of Life Vehicle directive are expected to mandate that 25% of plastic used in new vehicles come from recycling. But competition could boost ratios even higher.  

For quality control and the security of long-term supply, Sirmax has opted for preparing its own recycled materials from available postconsumer sources. “We wanted to do recycling with the same quality controls we do today for compounding, and apply those standards in recycling,” Ferro says.  Sirmax purchased a recycling plant in Italy in 2019, where the company processes polypropylene from postconsumer sources.  

Different Recycling Approaches for Europe and North America

Sirmax has undergone a global expansion in the past 10 years, seeking to provide its customers, which are also global, with service local to their manufacturing operations in the Americas and Asia as well as Europe.

Sirmax came to North America in 2015, with the construction of a compounding plant in Anderson, Indiana. The location was a brownfield site, formerly home to Guide Lamp, a division of General Motors. In 2022, Sirmax started up a new recycling plant, immediately adjacent to the original plant, with the goal of supplying the company with its own recycled content.

The company found that sources of PCR were inadequate when it came to polypropylene. Polypropylene in the United States is — increasingly — collected as part of single stream curbside recycling programs in some municipalities, but collection programs vary widely and the resulting product is often contaminated with other materials such as HDPE.

Many companies have been successful using PCR PP for applications where a mixture of resin materials has limited or no real downside. But Sirmax sells more technical products used in such applications as automotive interiors, which need to meet rigorous dimensional and performance standards, and have low odor and low emissions. Sirmax was also concerned with the consistency of supply.

However, sources of postindustrial or preconsumer polypropylene abound. Supply of good quality industrial material is more abundant in the U.S. than in Europe.  “In the U.S., we found sources of material that have not been available in Europe for the past 20 years,” says Marco Pavin, U.S. product director at Sirmax.

Sirmax found that sources of PP-based flexible packaging, non-wovens, and hard-to-recycle streams were underutilized and readily available. The difficulty of handling and processing these lightweight materials have kept many away, but Sirmax has been able work with equipment suppliers to develop procedures and equipment configurations to successfully process these materials.

By using integrated recycling operations, the company has greater visibility into any future changes in availability. The recycling plant can also purpose-make material for the compounding plant.

“The compounding plant has a reliable supplier of recycled raw material, that they can ask, ‘Ok, I need this material with these properties, can you make it for me?’ and the recycling plant will, based on the materials available, control and produce for that application,” Ferro says.

The integration also serves as a diversification for Sirmax. If the compounding business faces economic headwinds, the recycling business can carry on making and distributing recycled polypropylene into other industries.

Anticipating Long-Term Growth in Recycling

For quality and consistency, Sirmax focuses on PIR for now. In the future, if changes improve and homogenize the U.S. recycling infrastructure, Sirmax can shift to processes it has developed for PCR in Italy. Capacity for recycling is currently up to 40 million lbs/yr, and the adjacent compounding plant can produce up to 105 million lbs/yr. In addition, Sirmax has room to expand and build even more capacity on the 35-acre Anderson site.

“Today, 90% of what we are producing is completely virgin,” Ferro says. “But, most of the samples that are going out to customers for new projects have recycled content inside, and in 90% of the meetings we have with customers, there is sustainability and recycling involved.”

U.S. collection infrastructure and regulatory framework around recycled materials may be lagging at present, but Sirmax has shown that the company has enough confidence in the long-term arc to make significant investments. The state of Indiana is also investing. Last year, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management awarded $2 million to recycling activities in the state, including a $296,000 grant to Sirmax, which went toward the expansion of recycling operations.