Deceuninck has put a new recycling facility into service and will now be able to recycle up to 45,000 tonnes of PVC-U a year.

The facility is at Deceuninck Group’s recycling and compounding site in Diksmuide, Belgium. Input material will be sourced from post-industrial waste collection (own scrap and customers off-cuts), as well as from the huge amount of 30-40 year old first generation PVC-U windows which are gradually being replaced.

Francis Van Eeckhout, Deceuninck CEO said: “This investment underlines the ecological ambition of both Deceuninck and our customers. The increasing use of recycled materials will further reduce the ecological footprint of our products and of our production processes. It will also reduce dependency on virgin material supply and mitigate to a certain extent the negative effect of fluctuating raw material prices.”

The growing demand for colour in windows

The installation includes technology which will enable the company to recycle PVC-U profiles of all colours and of all different compositions, including those containing glass-fibre. During the recycling process, contaminations are removed, grinded and sorted by colour. After granulation, the recycled material, which is an alternative to virgin material, is used for the extrusion of new PVC-U window profiles.

Rob McGlennon, Deceuninck UK Managing Director said: “It’s important for us to close the loop and make our processes as sustainable as possible. Deceuninck’s new recycling plant, close to our worldwide headquarters in Belgium demonstrates this commitment to sustainability.”

Founded in 1937, Deceuninck is one of the world’s major PVC-U window and door systems companies, and a leading supplier of roofline, cladding and decking.