Recycled plastic from household packaging waste is one of the basic raw materials for Cabka's products and the company is convinced that creative ways of utilizing plastic waste will be even more necessary in the future. Innovation has been actively cultivated and promoted at Cabka's individual sites for many years. The teams involved in the processes are therefore optimally interlinked. With the Innovation Center, a location has now been created where the focus is on the development of new material formulations and the product development based on them. In addition, the results of all teams in this area are pooled and processed here so that all locations can benefit equally.

"The future belongs to recycled materials"
Why is this focus of activity particularly important? In Germany, for example, around 60 percent of plastic waste consists of household packaging waste. Turning this waste into a raw material from which high-quality products can be manufactured remains a challenge. Worldwide, the recycling rate for packaging waste from films is only 1.5%.

"The future belongs to recycled materials and they still have a lot of potential. In order to exploit this potential, we must constantly ask ourselves how we can optimize our current materials and process technologies. But also how we can find new materials and areas of application," summarizes Jörg Schuchalski, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Cabka.

The development of new material formulations goes hand in hand with the development of new products whose designs are geared towards the materials used. From this perspective, the focus is also shifting to process automation. The processing of the newly developed materials requires a corresponding adaptation of the production processes. This is why internal process technology is also a fundamentally important area of work at the Innovation Center. The work processes must be adapted to the products and their materials in order to optimize the workflow.

Cabka already has a sales office in the Spanish city, so the choice of Valencia as a location was an obvious one. An additional factor for the future success of the Innovation Center is the Valencia-based Polytechnic University. Cabka hopes that the close proximity will not only lead to cooperation on research topics, but also in the promotion of young talent. as