French shrink sleeve manufacturer Sleever International has developed a new recyclable sleeve that can be automatically separated from PET bottles in European recycling facilities.

Sleever’s PETsleeve is manufactured from a specially developed TPE-G polymer with a specific gravity of less than 1.0, enabling it to be easily separated from PET in the wet separation recycling systems used in European bottle recycling plant.

The introduction of the PETsleeve, which is being used by Coca-Cola on its Aquarius soft drink, comes a full three years after industry association Petcore flagged up the difficulty oriented PS, PET and PVC sleeves – all of which have specific gravity greater than 1.0 – presented to the European PET bottle recycling sector.

Jean-Charles Fresnel - Sleever International vice president of sales and marketing - says the PETsleeve material has been certified as suitable for separation in the PET recycling process by RTT Systemtechnik in Germany, Returpack in Sweden and Cleanaway in the UK.

PETsleeves provide a shrink ratio of at least 80% and can run on sleeve application rates of up to 60,000 bottles an hour. A water resistant ink system has been developed for the sleeve to prevent contamination of the separation tank water.