Reusable coffee cups made from organic plastic - sustainable and marked with REA

The "Marking Professionals" from REA Elektronik visit a Fraunhofer innovation factory in their latest video

Mühltal, July 17, 2023 - Buy, enjoy, throw away: Every year, 2.8 billion disposable cups end up in the bin in Germany alone - after a single "coffee to go" has been drunk from them. In the latest film in their series "REA Marking Professionals on Site", the Marking Professionals from REA Elektronik show that there is another way. Daniel Wege (Business Development Manager) and Frank Debusmann (Sales Director national coding and marking systems) traveled to Lemgo in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe (OWL) region to do just that. "Because the laser serves a good cause - sustainability," says Debusmann, they visited the local Fraunhofer Institute IOSB-INA and its Smart Factory OWL. The resulting film has been online since today.

"Things are happening here!" says Wege enthusiastically. "In combination with industry, Fraunhofer is often one step ahead," he reports on the work of the approximately 30,000 employees in 76 institutes of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. His partner Debusmann adds: "Incidentally, it should be noted that Fraunhofer registers two new patents almost every day." For the practical development of innovations, Fraunhofer IOSB-INA has set up a production line for plastic cups in the Smart Factory OWL in cooperation with ten industrial companies. Innovation Manager Nissrin Perez: "We have been researching technologies relating to industrial automation - the digitalization of factories - for several years now and are increasingly combining this with sustainability or issues relating to energy optimization and resource conservation. For example, we are also focusing on social problems such as the consumption of disposable coffee cups and the question: how can we reduce this?"

And that's what the three of them are looking at - from bio-based plastic, which even leaves a negative_{CO2 footprint}, to the production of the cups and their sustainable marking using a laser from REA JET and color change. Fraunhofer IOSB-INA has found a solution for the uncomplicated change between labeling contents - logos, lettering, QR codes - which, according to Perez, has reduced the processing time "from one day to a few minutes". Where exactly the problem lay, what the solution looks like and how the cup is produced and marked with the help of robotics is not only shown to the marking professionals by the host, but also to the viewers of the video.