The two ways to treat scrap
Production waste is either a cost or a raw material — the difference is a granulator line. Selling scrap film means accepting whatever price the collector offers and paying freight on top. Reprocessing it into pellets gives you a material you can re-feed to your own blown film line at a known cost, or sell as regrind when you have surplus.
The question is not whether recycling is good for the factory — it is when the line pays for itself.
A worked example
Take a plant producing 20 tonnes of film scrap a month (about 6% of a 330 t/month output — typical for a well-run line). At a scrap sale price of roughly $200–300/t and reprocessing cost of $600–800/t for pellets, the spread is the value of closing the loop.
Put in your own numbers: scrap tonnes per month × (pellet value − scrap value) − line operating cost. A 100 kg/h granulator running 16 hours a day processes about 1.5 tonnes of scrap daily. At a $300–400/t spread, that is $450–600 of value per day — before counting avoided disposal and freight costs. Most lines we install land inside an 18–30 month payback at typical utilisation, faster when scrap rates run high.
What the line must do
A film granulator line is more than a grinder: it crushes the film, washes it, dewaters, extrudes and pelletizes with melt filtration to keep contaminants out of the pellets. A washing stage matters if your scrap is printed or contaminated — unwashed regrind carries ink and additives into the next film, which is how quality complaints start.
Check what is included in the quote: crusher, washer, dewatering, extruder, screen changer, pelletizer and the control system. Missing components on a "complete line" quote are the oldest trick in the industry.
Inline or standalone?
Inline recycling feeds the granulator directly into the extruder of your blown film line — no remelting step, best energy efficiency, and the scrap never leaves the production hall. Standalone lines produce pellets you can store, blend or sell. If you already have a blown film line, ask whether inline integration is possible with your machine — it changes the payback calculation significantly.
Send us your scrap profile
Tell us your monthly scrap volume, material mix (PE, PP, printed or clean) and whether you want inline or standalone. We will return a granulator line proposal with throughput matched to your scrap — within 4 hours on business days.
Send your scrap volume and material mix — we'll size the recovery loop.
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