SIKOPLAST was founded in 1956 and has been continuously expanded, modernized and perfected.
When the oil crisis temporarily caused the raw material price of plastics to rise sharply at the beginning of the 1970s, a new market for recycling systems also emerged. Heinrich Koch, the founder of SIKOPLAST saw this as the future for his company and from then on developed the plant engineering and systems for the recycling of plastics. This development was consistently continued by SIKOPLAST, even when other engineering companies discontinued to follow this trend. One of the heart pieces of this success are the conical single-screw extruder. This screw design, which has often been copied, forms the heart of the SIKOPLAST recycling systems even today in a modified design.
In 1986 the foundation stone of today’s SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology was laid. The delivery program of the company SIKOPLAST has been continuously expanded since then. In addition to conventional recycling systems for processing all kind of thermoplastics, production waste, washing systems and parts for processing of post-consumer waste, as well as silos, conveyor belts, screen changer units, cutting mills, diverse types of granulating systems are part of today’s delivery program.
Today in the year 2021 SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology started its new orientation with the move to the new sales and service office in Troisdorf.
Interview with Stylianos W. Nikolaou, Managing Director at SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology GmbH
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Stylianos W. Nikolaou: SIKOPLAST deals with plastics in all conceivable areas, from production to rejects, in-house and post-consumer from the household.
We are very well known here in the field of inline recycling thanks to our SIKOREX (recovery extruder) and offline (regranulation extrusion) for nonwovens (PP-MB meltblown, SMS, TPU etc.)
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
S.W.N: We are constantly modernizing ourselves, and as in the past, it is just the visual aspect as well as advertising that unfortunately has been neglected in the previous generation of the SIKOPLAST management, but the process and technology makes us very different from others, where we are clearly ahead.
For the future, as well as now, we have laid many foundations and dealt with and defined many things internally.
In the near future, there will also be some external changes that will make us even more attractive and efficient than our competitors.
It’s nothing new and no secret, but with us you get the complete portfolio from a single source, not just the pure steel construction, assembly, commissioning, service, control and switch cabinet construction, as well as the production design of the complete system/project.
In addition to strengthening the Troisdorf location, through an increase in staff, future technical center, warehouse, we are also planning mergers with other companies – the prospects for this seem good.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
S.W.N: This will be very comprehensive and unusually beyond the scope, we don’t even have the complete product portfolio on our website, we don´t just work only in the standard, because we are often asked where our big competitors fail and have long since given up, but here are a few examples:
- Off-line re-pelletising systems for thermoplastic plastics (production of pellets)
- In-line recycling plants for film and PP non-woven (direct return of sorted out production waste without the need for pelletising as an intermediate stage) but also for PA/PET fibres for return to a raw material reactor
- Extruder
- Pelletising systems (water-ring, underwater and air cooled)
- Granulators
- Screen changers
- Washing systems for soiled plastics
- Preparation of PET
- Conveyor belts
- Steel rigs
- Pellet transport boxes, pellet and material silos
- Film to film
- Kaskadenextrusion
- Side feeder like feeding aggregates
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
S.W.N: The market is currently in a state of upheaval, everyone thinks they are currently on the trip to go green for image reasons and to focus on the topic of plastic recycling, to focus on energy costs.
There is something about the grin that sikoplast in particular has foreseen for decades and was one of the first, if not the first, to see this problem coming our way. We have to act in the long term and think about sustainability. But we were well prepared for everything.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
S.W.N: Very difficult to assess, since we are very broadly positioned with our portfolio that we don’t want to specialize in one direction, but cover the rough and whole of everything.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
S.W.N: Of course, our often copied system, but it still remains our original thanks to many advantages and hundreds of installed systems on the market worldwide. The range of applications is constantly increasing, both for other materials such as foils.
SIKOPLAST In-Line regenerative extruder
A unique selling point of SIKOPLAST are the machines of the SIKOREX series, which are more and more used especially in the nonwoven production process. Simplified, this is essentially a recycling extruder with the typical design of a conical screw, which is equipped with one or two independently operated material feeders. Here, the edge strips of the fleece winder are drawn inline, converted into melt and directly fed back into the extrusion process as melt, i.e. injected into the production extruder of the line. The second infeed can simultaneously process damaged or start-up rolls, in most cases in full width.
Sikorex • SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology GmbH (sikoplast-recycling.com)
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
S.W.N: For us it will be one of the most important and groundbreaking years of SIKOPLAST, as we already mentioned, we set the course in 2021, but this year we will go to the fullest and slowly prepare everything up to the K-Show 22 in Düsseldorf, sodas 2023/2024 everything can be implemented that we are working towards.
SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology GmbH
Mülheimer Straße 1| 53840 Troisdorf
☎️ +49 -2241 127765 10
📥 info@sikoplast-recycling.com
Geschäftsführer: Stylianos W. Nikolaou – HRB-Nr. 2322
Firmensitz: Troisdorf – Amtsgericht: Siegburg
Ust-Id.-Nr.: DE 815004800
Website: https://sikoplast-recycling.com/
SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology GmbH | LinkedIn
Stylianos W. Nikolaou: Stylianos W. Nikolaou – Geschäftsführer / Managing Director – SIKOPLAST Recycling Technology GmbH | LinkedIn
