Scientific Opinion on the safety assessment of the process ILPA, based on Starlinger Decon technology, used to recycle post-consumer PET into food contact materials
This scientific opinion of the EFSA Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes, Flavourings and Processing Aids deals with the safety assessment of the recycling process ILPA (EU register No RECYC105) which is based on the Starlinger Decon technology. The input of the process is hot caustic washed and dried PET flakes originating from collected post-consumer PET containers, mainly bottles and trays, containing no more than 5 % of PET from non-food consumer applications. Through this technology washed and dried PET flakes are pre-heated before being solid state polymerised (SSP) in a continuous reactor at high temperature under vacuum and gas flow. Having examined the challenge test provided, the Panel concluded that the pre-heating (step 2) and the decontamination in the continuous SSP reactor (step 3) are the critical steps that determine the decontamination efficiency of the process. The operating parameters to control their performance are well defined and are the temperature, the pressure, the residence time and the gas flow for step 2 and 3. Under these conditions, it was demonstated that the recycling process under evaluation, is able to ensure that the level of migration of potential unknown contaminants into food is below a conservatively modelled migration of 0.1 μg/kg food. Therefore, the recycled PET obtained from this process intended to be used up to 100 % for the manufacture of materials and articles for contact with all types of foodstuffs for long term storage at room temperature, with or without hotfill, is not considered of safety concern
