Reducing virgin plastic use and advancing circular economy principles have become key priorities for U.S. packaging manufacturers in the 21st century. Leading food and consumer packaging producers are steadily increasing their share of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), aiming to cut their carbon footprint and optimize resource use.
Yet switching from virgin feedstock to recycled material creates engineering challenges the industry can’t ignore. Even tiny shifts in material properties can derail production and compromise package quality. That’s why this global environmental transformation hinges on skilled technicians who can adjust complex industrial equipment to handle often-unpredictable recycled feedstock while keeping lines running.
One such professional is Kyrylo Morozov, who works at the Chester, South Carolina facility as a Maintenance Specialist for Ring Container Technologies – one of the largest plastic container manufacturers in North America. He oversees the full maintenance cycle of PET container lines: diagnostics, repairs, process fine-tuning, quality checks, and equipment changeovers when the molds or feedstock changes.
“At our facility, we primarily work with virgin PET – high-purity material with stable properties,” Kyrylo explains. “At the same time, Ring Container Technologies actively explores rPET integration, especially in our SmartCAN line, which can handle up to 50% recycled content.”
The specialist outlines the specific technical challenges that come with rPET integration:
Critical Moisture Content and Hydrolytic Degradation Risk: Recycled flake typically arrives with higher and less predictable moisture content, and its lower molecular weight makes it far more sensitive to hydrolysis. If the pre-drying step isn’t done properly and moisture levels don’t drop below the strict technical standard, the polymer degrades during extrusion. The result is microbubbles forming inside the bottle walls, which severely weakens the container’s structural strength.
Rheological Property Instability (Minimal Process Margin): Because recycled resin has lower molecular weight and inconsistent intrinsic viscosity (IV) levels, there’s virtually no room for error. The technician must maintain continuous, precise control over temperature profiles and blow pressure – conventional manufacturing tolerances simply don’t work here.
Color and Optical Variation: Every batch of rPET shows color variation depending on where the recycled material came from. For clear packaging, where any deviation from the standard color is visible to the eye, this becomes a major complication. Even the smallest color shift gets flagged as scrap.
When processing new material or working with a new supplier, several essential factors demand close attention. These include heating temperatures, material flow speed and pressure, and dwell time. “Cooling conditions and drying parameters are equally important. One parameter shift ripples through the entire system, the technician emphasizes. The fallout can show up in wall thickness uniformity, structural integrity, and overall scrap rates” Kyrylo says.
At Ring Container Technologies, quality verification is built into the production flow. Every bottle passes through an automated inspection to detect structural defects and inclusions, while mechanical strength is verified through pressure testing on sampled units. Any deviation triggers a parameter review – but success depends on the technician’s ability to correctly interpret the data and respond quickly.
Kyrylo Morozov’s expertise becomes apparent in high-pressure situations. During one night shift, after a switch to new molds, the line began producing defects. He analyzed the deformation pattern, recalculated the parameters, and completely recalibrated the machine’s vital components. His quick actions brought production back to stable operation, preventing hours of downtime and the loss of expensive raw materials.
Another hallmark of the maintenance engineer’s approach is his preventive diagnostics system, built on analyzing finished product defects. Beyond the facility’s standard multi-level quality controls (X-ray inspection and pressure testing), he has developed his own analytical method, which links specific container defects directly to cross-system mechanical and automation failures. While standard protocols often treat machinery components as isolated units, Kyrylo’s integrated framework traces defects across the entire production loop. By analyzing a defect’s physical geometry, he can pinpoint its precise root cause.
“When the system detects a scratch, micro-deformation, or uneven wall thickness distribution, I look at the specific nature of that defect to determine with millimeter precision exactly which mechanical component, valve, or mold requires adjustment or replacement,” the expert explains. Combining visual analysis with technical experience allows him to isolate and eliminate problems at their source before they escalate.
This meticulous approach to defect reduction naturally extends to how the facility handles the waste that is inevitably generated during material changeovers and fine-tuning. As rPET adoption expands across the packaging industry, companies are searching for effective ways to process recycled feedstock with the goal of eventually reaching near-zero waste. For Kyrylo Morozov, part of the solution involves knowing how to recycle plastic within the facility, known as in-plant recycling, and managing these internal waste streams intelligently.
To minimize losses during line startups, the technician carefully blends out-of-specification preforms and other process waste that has retained structural integrity. After testing and calculating the exact proportions, this waste is ground down and fed back into the virgin resin stream with minimal impact on quality.
On ultra-pure production lines where safety standards prohibit reintroducing process waste into the primary loop, he recommends a different approach – downcycling. In these cases, defective material is ground up and re-extruded into granules for high-strength industrial applications like strapping tape or backing textiles.
The packaging industry’s transition to sustainable materials, such as recycled polyethylene terephthalate, hinges above all on effective practical execution. Kyrylo Morozov emphasizes that a deep understanding of material behavior and machinery must be coupled with a systemic view of the entire production process and the ability to adapt equipment to changing conditions on the fly.
