Nextloopp's proprietary recycling process for polypropylene has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for direct food-contact applications.
The FDA issued a Letter of No Objection (LNO), logged as Prenotification Consultation No. 3291, confirming that the system can produce recycled polypropylene (rPP) of suitable purity when feedstock is sourced from compliant food-contact articles. The authorisation covers use of Nextloopp rPP at levels up to 100 per cent across all food types and under Conditions of Use A through H, which range from high-temperature sterilisation to frozen storage.
Professor Edward Kosior, founder and managing director of Nextek, said, “It validates the scientific rigour of our technology and provides brand owners and converters with complete confidence to use Nextloopp rPP in direct food-contact packaging with all food types over a very wide range of usage conditions.”
NextLoopp, a global project led by Nextek Ltd, is also undergoing review by the European Food Safety Authority. The company said resin can already be placed on the EU and UK markets ahead of the EFSA process, which typically takes two years.
A multi-participant project, Nextloopp continues to break new ground in its mission to create food-grade and INRT-grade rPP. The project entails separating food-grade PP from the rest using cutting-edge marker technology, PolyPrism, to identify and sort any number of pack variants from butter tubs and yoghurt pots, to coffee pouches and detergent bottles in any plastic type.
Nextloopp decontaminates the polymer to ensure compliance with food-grade standards in the UK, the EU and the USA, using patented PPristine technology, and turns it back into food-grade recyclates ready to be included in new food-grade PP packaging.
