AI Pet Tray-Sorting Facilities
Cirrec's Sorting Plant Focuses on Food-Grade Tray Recycling
Kanesa D — January 15, 2026
Cirrec operates a state-of-the-art recycling facility in the Netherlands that transforms post-consumer PET trays from household collection systems into food-grade recycled material. The plant employs three Steinert UniSort PR EVO 5.0 sorting systems, which use sensor fusion to capture both chemical composition and visual characteristics simultaneously. This integrated data enables AI-driven sorting, with the Steinert Intelligent Object Identifier trained to recognize features unique to food-contact packaging, such as tray geometry, printing patterns, and surface textures.
This advanced system achieves purity levels above 95%, meeting the stringent requirements for food-grade recycling. After initial baling, ferrous metals are removed using a Steinert UME overhead magnet, and non-ferrous metals are separated using a CanMaster eddy-current system, followed by optical sorting, then grinding, washing, and processing into flakes and pellets.
The resulting recycled PET is supplied to Faerch Group production sites, where it is remade into new packaging containing approximately 70% recycled content.
