University of Central Lancashire and Heyside Plastics Limited KTP 24_25 R3

A plastics manufacturer is learning how to turn recycled waste into new, commercially viable products. This matters because most plastic waste is downcycled into lower-value items or simply discarded. The technical challenge is that recycled plastics often have inconsistent quality, degraded properties, and contamination that make them unsuitable for manufacturing. Companies lack the materials science knowledge and process control to reliably produce high-grade goods from these waste streams. The Knowledge Transfer Partnership embeds university expertise directly into the company to solve this. Researchers will work through the entire recycling pipeline—from sourcing and sorting waste materials, through processing and manufacturing, to establishing partnerships for closed-loop recycling programmes. If successful, the company could produce new products from recycled plastics that meet commercial quality standards, reducing reliance on virgin materials and keeping waste out of landfill or incineration. This is applied industrial research with a clear commercial endpoint. The impact is on manufacturing supply chains and waste infrastructure: more plastic kept in circulation, less extracted from the ground, and a practical model for other manufacturers to follow.