November 2024 sees incoming EU legislation that prohibits the use of certain additives and stabilisers in diverse products for the construction sector. Leading polymer compounder Benvic has anticipated these upcoming changes and is ready with a new material for the fluid management part of the industry – the IR25R series.
Eric Grange, Benvic Marketing Manager reports.
Insight
It's now critical for all industries. In fact, regulatory trends show that some level of recycled polymer will soon be mandatory for most sectors.
For some years now Benvic has been ahead of this particular curve; investing in and boosting our mechanical recycling capabilities - with much of our expertise focused on our flagship range ProVinyl, our PVC compounds.
Recent efforts have seen us:
Within the building sector alone, there is a very great diversity of products and recycling practices. The rPVC requirements for windows frames, cable conducts or fluid fittings – to name but three – are all absolutely different.
Recent regulations have also been reshaping the PVC supply side; leading Europe’s compounders to adapt their formulations and substitute banned additives, stabilizers and plasticizers with effective alternative compounds.
In addition, the construction sector is now tasked to manage the end-of-life issues of its products in a more environmental manner. Most PVC based building products have quite a long-life expectancy – whether used inside the visible infrastructure or below ground. Several decades of service mean that the additive issues in these particular products need to be handled in a very particular way.
Recognizing this issue, the EU compliance date for long-lived PVC applications – such as pipes and fittings – has been extended to the year 2033.
The regulation specifies that building products of this kind - made with a percentage of recycled PVC - must be either non accessible or protected by another material layer without any legacy additives.
Last – and certainly not least - full recycling circularity for these products has been made mandatory in order to avoid a complicated mix of materials and legacy additives. Therefore, beginning in May 2026, all fluid management applications must demonstrate full circulatory.
In a nutshell, all rPVC content for new pipes and fittings must come from old pipes and fittings.
These new arrangements will necessarily bring the construction sector and its (re)compounding suppliers much closer together. Tensions and bottlenecks can be foreseen regarding feedstock availability, sorting, logistics, traceability and other issues.
However, at Benvic we are already ready with our solution:
Our new compound grade IR25R is a like-for-like material substitute that can be used in injection moulding or rigid extrusion specifically for these applications.
Our main innovation is to source and blend a post-consumer polymer that is outside the scope of the new legislation: a PVC compound with the right feedstock! In addition, the recyclate feedstock is fully available.
Further technical improvements can also be built in: higher vicat figures - up to 81°C – can help servicing temperatures linked to global warming.
Using tried and tested recyclate supply chains in this way also allows us to minimise expensive recycling cost (sorting, storage, adaptive reformulation) - thus ensuring equivalence to existing virgin-based compounds.
In summary, Benvic’s IR25R series and its derivatives open the door for injection molding product suppliers to seamlessly adapt to significant changes in Europe’s future construction industry.
In this way, Benvic enables its customers to immediately introduce a compliant recycled solution that combines technical performance at an affordable cost.
Please put us to the test – and challenge us for your new projects.
