The first accredited research laboratory for waste plastics recycling in Europe

14. 5. 2020

Government Communication Office

In March 2020, the Slovenian competence centre for recycling of plastic materials Interseroh Plastics Research & Development was awarded international accreditation of laboratory standard ISO/IEC 17025:2017, becoming the only accredited research institution in Europe to be specialised in the research and development of recycling and recovery of plastic waste materials into innovative materials used in production.

The Competence Centre in Maribor strives to achieve a circular economy and the sustainable development of society | Author ALBA Group

Interseroh Plastics Research & Development in Maribor is a subsidiary of the recycling specialist ALBA Group. The Maribor subsidiary has been in operation since 2016 and has since then developed into an internationally recognised research and innovation centre. As the result of many years of research and development, Interseroh developed the so-called Recycled-Resource process, which enables the up-cycling of household and industrial plastic waste.

The main feature of the Recycled-Resource is a process in which new material in granulated form is produced from disposable waste plastics, which is fully comparable in all its properties to primary plastic materials from oil and natural gas and to technical characteristics that are tailored to customers' quality requirements. The Recycled-Resource process increases the value of the material in each of its subsequent life cycles, which is impossible to achieve with common recycling processes.

The biggest innovation of the process is the development of formulas for the modification of properties of the material, which make it possible to create a recycled material, Procyclen, with a combination of different chemical modifiers and additives that fully replaces plastic materials from primary raw materials.