Technical skills on the production cycle, waste selection and product chemistry improve customer trust.

The market for the sale of regenerated polymers , be they granules or ground, has a history that goes back a long way and begins with the approach of the sales force of virgin polymers towards regenerated products, in the same markets and on the same customers.

At the beginning, the products were seen only as an economical, convenient fallback to the market's request to reduce the costs of finished products, creating a sort of joker to be spent when conditions deemed them necessary.

As we have seen over time, the sale of virgin polymers compared to regenerated ones requires completely different approaches , as the technical, qualitative, productive and chromatic stability of a virgin polymer is different, or completely different, from a regenerated product whose history it is necessary to know.

This approach to sales has led in many cases to very significant technical and economic problems which, in the past, did not constitute major problems due to the small quantity of regenerated polymer that was produced and sold.

However, over the years, it has increasingly become an important problem in the face of a marked increase in the production and use of regenerated materials on the market.

We take into consideration that this consumption trend will increase more and more and the problems of waste management, from which regenerated products originate, will be increasingly complex due to the increase on the market of plastics that are difficult to separate and reuse in a technically correct way .

Given these premises, the approach to the sale of a regenerated granule or ground material must start from the seller's preparation on various aspects of the polymer process and their use, in particular:

• Knowledge of the chemical structure of polymers
• Knowledge of the waste collection and separation cycle
• Knowledge of the regeneration cycle, which includes granule grinding, screening, washing, selection and extrusion
• Knowledge of the limits of these processes as a function of the available input

Once this information has been acquired, it is necessary to have the technical information to evaluate the differences in the quality of the products, granulated or ground, made, as a fundamental basis for the correct approach to sales, avoiding errors that would lead to a loss of customer confidence and an economic cost not insignificant in some cases. The main information that our sales network should acquire is:

Knowledge of the functioning of a laboratory and the importance of systematic batch testing

Knowledge of widely used materials such as PP, HDPE, LDPE, MDPE and PVC, which do not necessarily involve the creation of complex recipes, but of some basic tests such as density, DSC, MFI, ash content, the IZOD and the module. It would be good to know how to physically carry out the tests but, if you don't have a laboratory, understand how they are done.

Knowing how to interpret their results to understand the quality of the product you want to sell

Having collected, interpreted and understood the information that comes from laboratory tests, it is important to understand what interactions the polymers can have with each other and what the chemical and physical reactions will be during processing and in the life of the product itself.

Proposing a polymer to the customer only through the identification of a generic parameter, for example only the MFI or the Density, is unprofessional and very dangerous.

In today's world, where the speed and fluidity of relationships is a prevailing fact and the conclusion of a sale is also the result of pressure from both those who buy and those who sell, haste is not a good way to build customer loyalty, as recycled polymers require careful analysis of the finished product that the customer must create with recycled polymers.

Here a fundamental skill comes into play, which is to know the interactions and behaviors that the various families of polymers have among themselves and between and other substances incorporated during waste recycling, in particular:

• Chemical-physical behavior between HD and PP for example in bottle blowing or film
• Chemical-physical behavior between HD and PP for example in the extrusion of pipes or profiles
• Physical behavior between PP and PE in molding especially in relation to the quality of the surfaces
• Chemical and physical behavior between LD and PP and LLD for film production
• Physical behavior of polymers in the presence of gas or humidity
• Mechanical behavior and technical limits on the presence of mineral fillers in various polymers
• Mechanical behavior and technical limits in the use of PVC of different compositions for pipes, fittings and profiles

Last but not least due to the relevance of the related implications, it is important that those approaching sales know the behavior of regenerated products , especially post-consumer products, in the production context and the consequences, on the quality of the finished products, of choices of using unsuitable polymers. I would like to give just a few exhaustive examples:

• Prevention of surface defects in the production of HD, MD, PVC and LD smooth pipes
• Prevention of surface defects on HD and PP corrugated pipe rings
• Prevention of defects on the internal surface of double-wall corrugated pipes
• Knowledge of mechanical strengthening techniques for corrugated pipes using post-consumer granules
• Knowledge of techniques for protecting against atmospheric agents and prolonging the life of products
• Knowledge of the problems of blowing bottles and cans using regenerated materials, in relation to the quality of the surface, resistance to welding, crushing, color and vertical compression over time.
• Knowledge of the behavior in the machine and on the finished product of the use of LD and HD, post-consumer or mixed, for the production of films of different thicknesses, in particular the avoidance of problems with surface quality, tear resistance, elasticity and brilliance of the film color
• Knowledge of the behavior during molding and on finished products of polymers with mixed components even in small quantities
• Knowledge of the balancing behavior of recipes between post-consumer-post-industrial and virgin polymers by virtue of improvements in the production cycle and the aesthetic and mechanical quality of the finished products.

Knowledge of regenerated materials is certainly a reason for self-confidence in the sales phase, but it is also for the customer who purchases, as errors which always have a cost are minimized.

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