K 2025: Interview with Sales Director Patrick Henzler on the status quo of plastics recycling

Post-consumer recycling has been under severe pressure in Europe for around two years. Many of our customers in this sector are relocating production to more cost-effective foreign countries or closing their operations completely after 20 or even 30 years. Recyclers who work in the post-consumer sector have high requirements for the treatment of the material. The materials are contaminated, they have to be washed and sometimes sorted - even if they are purchased from a sorting plant. This results in high energy consumption and therefore high costs in Germany. Added to this is the lack of well-trained personnel. Finally, recyclers in Germany are being hit by the flow of cheap recycling material from Asia, especially from China. This material is produced under different market conditions: The personnel requirements are lower, as are labor costs and energy costs.

Yes, the situation is fundamentally different here. If someone manufactures pipes, for example, they have their own production waste. This waste is clean. It doesn't incur the same high costs as post-consumer waste. Another positive aspect is that you have control over your own waste stream. It is true that this area is currently developing more slowly than before. But not for structural reasons, but because of the sluggish global economy. Projects are often being postponed at the moment, but not canceled. There is pressure to recycle post-production waste. For example, the aim is to avoid disposal costs. Companies would rather invest in a recycling solution than have to cope with high logistics costs every month. For us as a machine manufacturer, both areas are very important.

This trend is here to stay. Many customers want to buy everything from a single source for a new system. They want to hand over responsibility for smooth production to a system provider. However, this can mean that they have to make compromises, because not every machine in a system necessarily has to be the best of its kind. We do not go along with this trend and instead follow the motto “stick to your last”. We are convinced that if you do everything, you don't do it as well. We know our products, but we also add new products and develop them further. For example, we took over a company that manufactures dewatering presses. In the past, these were mainly used in the food sector. We have now further developed this dewatering press so that it can also be used in car washes. At the end of the system is one of our classic shredding machines. This is an increase in efficiency for us.

We enable our customers to deploy their personnel efficiently on our machines. Keyword: ease of maintenance. Customers want to carry out the necessary machine maintenance as quickly as possible and increasingly want to switch to machine monitoring. This is because the shortage of maintenance personnel is already serious throughout Europe and will continue to increase. We have developed a special tool, WE.monitor, which detects faults and also enables automatic countermeasures to be taken. We are therefore simplifying and optimizing maintenance. Customers spend a lot of money on a machine, so they ask us to develop the machines in such a way that they are as little dependent on personnel as possible.

WEIMA attaches great importance to this as a company. For example, we have equipped all of our production hall roofs with solar panels and supply ourselves with electricity. In terms of our products, we contribute to sustainability through high energy efficiency. Our machines consume little electricity and can process materials in a way that conserves resources. However, the recycling requirements in Europe are very strict and lead to high costs. Competitors elsewhere do not have these costs. In many countries, the process water from a car wash is simply discharged into the nearest river. However, the greater the awareness of sustainable business practices in these countries, the greater the opportunity for European machine manufacturers to play a pioneering role there.

We are quite optimistic and therefore expect a number of inquiries. Despite the aforementioned problems in the post-consumer sector. These affect Europe and the USA, but we must not forget that the markets in Asia are growth markets. The world is not homogeneous and an international company like us always has the advantage of balancing business across the different regions of the world. We are also expecting new inquiries in the field of post-industrial recycling at K. In general, we expect fewer business deals than at previous trade fairs. Many companies wait and realize a planned project one or two years later.