epsotech News: Closing the circular loop on maritime gear with the SEA PLASTICS initiative

With a new brand strategy in place since beginning of 2021, epsotech´s new claim, „we care about plastics“, sets the company on a mission to focus on sustainable plastic production and recycling loops. In consideration of that, epsotech has recently partnered up with DFS, Randers REB, and PLASTIX in a joint collaboration to offer maritime gear made from 100 % recycled fishing gear.

Maritime gears such as fishing nets, trawling nets and ropes often end up as waste on the seabed and those are then referred to as so called „ghost nets“. Not only do countless maritime animals get trapped therein, but also do the plastic nets account for a huge part of the overall plastic waste pollution in the oceans.

According to a statement by WWF from October 2020, there are currently over 1 billion tons of ghost nets in the oceans worldwide.

In an attempt to reduce the amount of maritime plastic pollution, the SEA PLASTICS project was kicked off by DFS, who is one of Sweden´s leading trawl suppliers with a vision to close the circular loop on maritime gear.

The idea is fairly simple: source and fully recondition used maritime gear. In order to successfully implement this idea, DFS partners up with epsotech, PLASTIX and Randers REB.

PLASTIX is specialized in sourcing, composting, and extruding ocean plastics that it supplies to its customer epsotech. The recycled ocean plastics is then turned into spinning fibers by epsotech. Further down in the value chain, Randers REB uses the epsotech fibers to produce maritime ropes for DFS.

The partnership with DFS, PLASTIX and Randers REB is only the beginning. epsotech’s mission is to constantly increase both its volume of buy back material from the market and the replacement of non-recyclable solutions across all its target industries.

epsotech forms part of the Lenbach Equity Opportunities I (LEO I) fund portfolio, managed by DUBAG Group.

For more details on the Sea Plastics initiative, click on the link below:

https://epsotech.com/en/news-detail/from-rope-to-rope-industry-partners-close-the-loop.html