Deceuninck quadruples PVC recycling capacity to 45,000 tonnes per year

Deceuninck Group has recently announced the addition of a new recycling facility at its recycling and compounding site in Diksmuide, Belgium.

The addition of this new recycling line confirms Deceuninck’s belief in PVC-U as a sustainable and future-proof material for the building industry and demonstrates the company’s ecological ambition.

The line will allow Deceuninck to recycle up to 45,000 tonnes of PVC-U a year. Input material will be sourced from post-industrial waste collection, as well as from the huge amount of 30-40 year old first generation PVC-U windows which are gradually being replaced.

Due to its low thermal conductivity, PVC-U window profiles have three times the heat insulation efficiency of aluminium profiles. During the lifetime of the windows as well as during production and end-of-life recycling, the energy consumption and CO 2 emission of PVC-U windows is less than half of its aluminium counterparts.

Plus, the high recyclability of PVC-U enables it to be reused almost endlessly without loss of quality. On top of this, according to estimations by VinylPlus, for each kg of PVC-U recycled, 2 kg of CO 2 is saved.

Overall, the Deceuninck recycling facility will save more than 2 million windows per year from landfill or incineration.

The installation includes the latest technology which will enable Deceuninck to recycle PVC-U profiles of all colours and of all different compositions, including those containing glass-fibre. During the recycling process, all contaminations are removed, ground, and sorted by colour. After granulation, the recycled material, which is a perfect alternative to virgin material, is used for the extrusion of new PVC-U window profiles.

Francis Van Eeckhout, Deceuninck CEO comments: “This investment underlines the ecological ambition of both Deceuninck and our customers. The increasing use of recycled materials will further reduce the ecological footprint of our products and of our production processes. It will also reduce dependency on virgin material supply and mitigate to a certain extent the negative effect of fluctuating raw material prices.”