Scientific Opinion on the safety assessment of the process LPR based on EREMA Advanced and Colortronic SSP ® technology used to recycle post-consumer PET into food contact materials

This scientific opinion of the EFSA Panel on Food Contact Materials, Enzymes, Flavourings and Processing Aids deals with the safety assessment of the recycling process LPR (EU register No RECYC061) which is based on the EREMA advanced and Colortronic SSP ® technologies. The input to the process is hot caustic washed and dried PET flakes originating from collected post-consumer PET bottles and containing no more than 5 % of PET from non-food consumer applications. In this process, washed and dried PET flakes are heated successively in two continuous reactors under vacuum before being extruded into pellets. After extrusion they are crystallised and solid state polymerized. Having examined the results of the challenge test provided, the Panel concluded that the four steps, the decontamination in two continuous reactors, extrusion, crystallisation and solid state polymerization are the critical steps that determine the decontamination efficiency of the process. The operating parameters to control the performance of these critical steps are temperature, pressure, gas flow and residence time. Under these conditions, it was demonstrated that the recycling process is able to ensure that the level of migration of potential unknown contaminants into food is below the modelled migration of 0.1 μg/kg food derived from exposure scenario for infants and 0.15 μg/kg food derived from the exposure scenario for toddlers. The Panel concluded that recycled PET obtained from LPR process is not of safety concern when used to manufacture articles intended for food contact materials applications in compliance with the conditions as specified in the conclusion of the opinion.