Ahead of this year's expo, we spoke to Morten Augestad, Business Director at Norner.

As the business director who is responsible for the Norner recycling and application pilot centre, Morten's days are very busy trying to help deliver and fulfil clients' ambitions for a circular economy. A high focus is quality uplift of recycled material to
avoid downcycling of recycled materials.

What are the biggest challenges facing the market today and how can this be overcome?

The volume of recycled materials coming in is very large, both post industrial (PIR) and post consumer waste (PCR). The challenge is to utilize technology in the full waste management and recycled material chain to enable high quality for end applications within FMCG and packaging.

In your opinion, what do you consider to be the greatest development in your industry in the last
3 years?

The sorting technologies of waste by NIR and colour sorting is impressive and development continues at high speed. The balance of volumes coming from classical fossil sources versus recycled materials has changes and I think we have only seen the start.

How do you see the sector developing in the next two to five years?

Recycled materials will be strongly influenced by the ongoing strong work of better designed recyclable solutions. This will help the full recycling circle to be stronger and more complete.

You will be speaking at AMI’s plastics industry expos in Europe in September, could you give us a preview on what you will be talking about?

Norner recycling pilot centre has been developed as a tool for the industry to develop better and more sustainable use of recycled materials. Our scientists and technicians work every day to develop and implement technology to improve quality of recycled materials by the help of clever extrusion, advanced supporting processes in the extrusion, modification with additives and more. The results are further tested and evaluated in our application centre where injection moulded articles, blow moulded bottles or film are extruded and tested in end use. Very exiting times with strong cooperation partners and clients by leading specifiers and companies.

Morten will be speaking about 'Recycling pilot centre design and technologies for product improvement' at the Plastics Extrusion World Expo conference.