How do you remove leftover material from a core without destroying it?

With a core stripper: the blade cuts the wound material lengthwise and stops before the tube. The material peels off and falls into a basket as a clean mono-material fraction; the core comes out intact and reusable. RECYCLO does this at up to 2,500 kg/h.

Which cores can be recovered?

Cardboard, plastic and even metal cores with internal diameters from 76 to 304 mm (50 mm with a special bar). For metal cores the cut is set to leave about half a millimetre of material so the blade never touches the tube.

Is core reuse relevant for PPWR compliance?

Directly: recovering cores intact and returning them to production is documented reuse of a packaging component (EN 13429 reference), and the clean mono-material fraction demonstrates real recyclability. Both are the kind of evidence the PPWR (Reg. (EU) 2025/40) expects from 12 August 2026.

Stage 4 · Core recovery

Reuse your cores. Recycle the leftover. Stop paying for both twice.

At the end of every reel two assets are usually thrown away together: a perfectly reusable core, and metres of clean material contaminated only by how it was disposed of. Recovering them is a machine job — and the fourth stage of the core lifecycle.

Intact cardboard core and clean mono-material fraction recovered from an end-of-life reel

The end-of-reel problem

Slitting rejects, obsolete stock, customer returns, roll ends: every converter accumulates reels with residual material wound on good cores. Cut them up with a guillotine and core fragments contaminate the material — no clean recycling stream, no reusable core. Unwind them by hand with a cutter and you pay in labour and safety. Either way, you repurchase cores you already own.

The core stripper answer

A core stripper cuts the residual material lengthwise and stops before the tube: the material peels off and falls as a clean, mono-material fraction; the core comes out intact and returns to production. RECYCLO — the machine that leads this stage of CORES WORLD — does it in one cycle:

Throughput	2,500 kg/h soft plastics · 1,300 kg/h aluminium
Cores	76–304 mm internal diameter (50 mm with special bar) — cardboard, plastic and even metal cores
Max reel	600 mm Ø · 1,500 mm length · 150 kg
Real limit	100 mm (10 cm) of wound material on the core
Operation	Operator sets only tube thickness and blade feed speed; the rest is detected automatically
Safety & IP	CE-compliant, fully guarded, protected by patent

RECYCLO core stripper machine, full view

What recovery is worth

Cores — recovered 100% intact and reusable: a tube you stop repurchasing on every recovered reel.
Material — LDPE, PP, PS, PET, paper laminates and aluminium leave as clean fractions that are easier to sell than to landfill.
PPWR evidence — documented core reuse (EN 13429) and real recyclability of the separated fraction feed straight into your compliance dossier. PPWR applies from 12 August 2026.

Go deeper on the dedicated resource

End-of-reel recovery has its own in-depth site in the ROLL family — method comparisons (cutter vs guillotine vs unwinder vs core stripper), the full technical sheet, a savings calculator and the PPWR guide: roll-recyclo.com.

roll-recyclo.comThe complete end-of-reel recovery resource. Request a quoteSend reel formats and volumes. Cardboard coresBack to stage 1: buying cores right.

Contact

Tell us about your cores and your rolls.

Send us your core dimensions, materials and yearly volumes. ROLL replies within 24 hours with the right solution — or the right partner in the ecosystem.

Request a quote See the RFQ guide

Write to us directly — info@roll-packaging.com