Scientific Opinion on the safety assessment of the process ‘San Miguel Industrias PET’ based on Starlinger IV+® 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 ‘San Miguel Industrias’ which is based on the Starlinger IV+^® technology. The input of the process is hot caustic washed and dried PET flakes originating from collected post-consumer PET containers, containing no more than an average 0.15 % of PET from non-food consumer applications. In this technology, washed and dried PET flakes are dried and crystallised in a reactor, then extruded into pellets which are further crystallised in a second reactor. Crystallised pellets are pre-heated in a third reactor and fed to the Solid State Polycondensation (SSP) reactor. Having examined the challenge test provided, the Panel concluded that the three steps, drying and crystallisation, extrusion and crystallisation and SSP are the critical steps that determine the decontamination efficiency of the process. The operating parameters to control their performance are the temperature, the gas flow and the residence time for the drying and crystallisation step, the temperature, the pressure and the residence time for extrusion and crystallisation and SSP steps. Under these conditions and using the reference contamination level of 3 mg/kg PET, it was demonstrated that the process is able to ensure that the level of migration of potential unknown contaminants into food is below a conservatively modelled migration of 0.1 μg/kg food. Therefore, the Panel concluded that the recycled PET obtained from this process intended to be used up to 100 % for the manufacture of materials and articles for contact with all types of foodstuffs for long-term storage at room temperature, with or without hotfill, is not considered of safety concern. Trays made of this recycled PET are not intended to be used, and should not be used in microwave and conventional ovens.