Recover the core. Recycle the material. Lose neither.
At the end of every reel there are two assets most plants throw away: a reusable core and a quantity of clean, recyclable material. The whole job is separating them without contaminating either.
The hidden cost at the end of the reel
When a reel reaches the end of its life, two things are usually lost at once. The core — a cardboard or plastic tube that can be bought back and reused — is destroyed. And the residual material wound on it is thrown away mixed with core fragments, so it cannot enter a clean recycling stream. Two assets become one waste cost.
Why the usual methods fail
| Method | What goes wrong |
|---|---|
| Manual cutter (utility knife) | Slow, and one of the main causes of operator injury in this task. A hand-held blade against a tightly wound reel is a constant risk. |
| Guillotine | Cuts material and core together, so both end up broken and mixed. The core is destroyed and the material contaminated — the fractions cannot be separated cleanly afterwards. |
| Unwinder | Very slow. It unwinds the full length of material without ever separating it from the core. |
The guillotine problem, in one line: if the core and the wound material are cut together, you cannot un-mix them. A clean recovery has to remove only the material and leave the core whole.
How a core stripper machine works
A core stripper cuts the residual material lengthways and stops before the core, so the material peels off and the tube is released intact. RECYCLO — the ROLL core stripper, protected by patent — does this in four steps:
Only two values are entered by the operator: the core wall thickness and the blade feed speed (slower for hard, rigid materials). Everything else is read by the machine: from the wall thickness it derives the outer diameter, and the clamp that locks the reels on the bar measures the total length of the reel — or of the group of reels — to be cut. The stripped material then falls by gravity into the metal basket underneath.
Why it pays back quickly
- Clean, sellable waste. The material comes off uncontaminated, in a single resin stream — easy to recycle, and easier to sell than to pay to dispose of.
- Reusable cores. The tube is recovered intact and goes back into production instead of being re-bought.
- Safety. The hand-held blade is gone. RECYCLO is CE-compliant, fully guarded, removing the main injury risk of manual stripping.
Clean material, plus recovered cores, plus fewer incidents, is what turns end-of-reel handling from a cost into a recovery — at 2,500 kg/h on soft plastics and 1,300 kg/h on aluminium.
Frequently asked questions
How can I recover cardboard or plastic cores from used reels?
A core stripper machine cuts the residual wound material lengthways and releases the inner core intact. RECYCLO does this in one cycle: the core comes out reusable and the material leaves as a clean, single-resin fraction ready for recycling.
Why is a manual cutter a problem for end-of-reel work?
Stripping reels by hand with a utility knife is slow and is one of the main causes of operator injury in this task. A fully guarded machine removes the hand-held blade from the process entirely.
Are the recovered cores reusable?
Yes. The core is released intact, so it can go straight back into production instead of being scrapped — recovering a re-buyable asset on every reel.
Turn end-of-reel waste into recovered value.
Send us your reel formats and material specs. ROLL replies within 24 hours with an assessment of your end-of-reel volumes.
Request a valuation See RECYCLO specs
Write to us directly — info@roll-packaging.com