Plastic Granulation Explained: From Waste Plastics to Manufacturing Regrind

Why Plastic Recycling Is Challenging for Businesses

Recycling plastic is often more complex than it first appears. Businesses generate a wide range of plastic types, including rigid plastics, packaging, mixed materials and manufacturing offcuts. These materials vary in size, shape and composition, with larger items like pallets and crates taking up valuable storage space and increasing costs.

In addition, plastics used in commercial environments may contain residues, labels or mixed polymers, making them harder to process efficiently. Without the right equipment and expertise, much of this waste risks being sent to landfill, not because it cannot be recycled, but because processing it is not always practical or cost-effective.

Plastic Granulation provides a practical solution. By cleaning, separating and reducing plastics into manageable pieces, it simplifies recycling and allows the material to be reintroduced into manufacturing supply chains.

What is Plastic Granulation?

Plastic granulation is a specialised recycling method that converts waste plastics such as bottles, containers, and production scrap into small pieces known as plastic regrind. This process turns plastic waste into reusable raw plastic material for new manufacturing processes.

The Journey from Plastic Waste to Valuable Resource

At the start of this process, plastics can be anything, from redundant stock, packaging, and offcuts to rejected components. To maximise the efficiency of plastic granulation, the process needs to be methodical and highly controlled, beginning with the separation, storage and collection or delivery of plastic waste. 

Once at the facility, the materials are further sorted to ensure compatibility and quality. All of the waste plastic will be assessed for its quality and separated accordingly. This results in different ratings of plastic regrind, and ensures that the final product is of the highest quality.

Next comes size reduction, in this step, plastics are shredded into smaller fragments to make them easier to clean and process. These fragments are then washed to remove contaminants such as dirt, labels, or residues.

During cleaning, plastic waste is processed through a specialised sink tank that separates the plastics based on density or composition to ensure different types of plastics are processed correctly. 

Finally, the clean material is processed through a granulator which cuts the plastic into consistent, small particles, creating the finished regrind. After drying and quality checks, the material is ready to be reused in manufacturing.

Regrind material is now widely used across the manufacturing industry, where it can be incorporated into the sustainable production of new plastic products, packaging materials, and industrial components.

This journey from bulky, unusable waste to a valuable raw material highlights the importance of plastic granulation. The resulting regrind is widely used across manufacturing industries, where it can be incorporated into new products, packaging, and industrial components, helping to reduce waste and support a more circular economy.

🎥 Video: See our plastic regrind process in action:

How Parry & Evans Supports a Circular Economy 

At Parry & Evans, we’ve invested in specialist plastic granulation infrastructure to support businesses across the UK. We are dedicated to managing their plastic waste more effectively by providing a dedicated recycling facility in Deeside, allowing us to process a wide range of plastic waste materials, from small packaging components to large industrial waste.

Our plastic granulation line can shred, wash, separate, and granulate waste plastics to produce high-quality plastic regrind suitable for manufacturing. By keeping the entire process in-house, we can maintain strict quality control while ensuring that plastics are processed efficiently and responsibly.

We support businesses across many different sectors, including manufacturing, logistics, food production, and retail, helping them convert plastic waste into reusable materials that support more sustainable and efficient operations.

If you are looking for a reliable recycling partner to support you with plastic granulation, our team can help you explore the most effective way to manage and recycle your materials.