Reifenhäuser relies on digital product passport

06.11.2023

The Reifenhäuser Group – leading manufacturer of extrusion machinery and components – relies on R-Cycle, the digital product passport (DPP) for plastics based on GS1 standards. With R-Cycle DPPs, Reifenhäuser enables its customers to make their products traceable. All relevant information on the material and processing is stored in the DPP and made available along the entire product life cycle, offering enormous potential for data management in the manufacturing process and recycling of plastic – especially in the packaging industry.

Image: White packaging with the inscription: "Identifiable and Fully Recyclable Packaging". Right: The blue digital product passport; Copyright: Reifenhäuser GmbH & Co. KG Maschinenfabrik

Source: Reifenhäuser GmbH & Co. KG Maschinenfabrik

R-Cycle was founded as an initiative by leading companies and organizations along the plastics value chain (including Reifenhäuser) and today offers – as a solution provider – a turnkey software-as-a-service solution for the application of digital product passports. GS1 Germany, known for standards and solutions around barcodes, has now published a new guideline "Circular Plastics Traceability", which offers all stakeholders in the plastics value chain a uniform framework to model cross-company processes and exchange data.

R-Cycle was involved in the development of "Circular Plastics Traceability" and follows the new GS1 Germany Guideline with its solution. The underlying technology is the cross-industry and internationally established GS1 EPCIS interface (Electronic Product Code Information Services). EPCIS is GS1's core standard for improving transparency in companies or value networks. Bernd Reifenhäuser, CEO of the Reifenhäuser Group, explains, "The publication of the 'Circular Plastics Traceability' Guideline is a decisive milestone for the establishment of R-Cycle. It gives us, as a machine manufacturer, the certainty of investing in a future-proof technology that enables our customers to use standardized digital product passports."

Exhibitors & products around digitalisation

Image: White plastic packaging. Below: The details of the ingredients in the form of a table and a pie chart; Copyright: Reifenhäuser GmbH & Co. KG Maschinenfabrik

R-Cycle's digital product passport provides information on all relevant ingredients of a plastic packaging. Source: Reifenhäuser GmbH & Co. KG Maschinenfabrik

The plastics industry – particularly in the packaging sector – faces ever-increasing industrial and regulatory information and reporting requirements. Recyclability assessments, EPR schemes or plastic tax calculations are just a few examples. The otherwise time-consuming and costly generation of the relevant data is now possible with R-Cycle at the push of a button. Currently, more than 45 leading industrial companies and organizations rely on R-Cycle as the solution for the digital product passport.

In addition to providing efficient information in the manufacturing process, digital product passports also enable better recycling to recover high-quality recyclates. Using the information stored in the DPP, waste sorting facilities can precisely categorize recyclable packaging and form recycling-friendly, single-sort fractions. The DPPs can be accessed via suitable marking (e.g. digital watermarks or QR codes) on the packaging.