Konica Minolta has shared some details of its partnership with MJ Material Technology, which has developed a way of producing recycled plastic resin materials from waste plastic, based on sensing technology developed by the former.
The fundamental problem of using waste plastic as a raw material is that the quality of that waste varies greatly, which forces manufacturers to pay for higher-grade waste though this can still lead to defects and part failures. To counter this, Konica Minolta has developed proprietary sensing and AI technologies to sort the raw materials and to determine the optimum mix of those materials.
This will be deployed at MJ Material Technology’s new production base in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The company, which refers to itself as MJ Material, appears to be a subsidiary of the Japanese company Meibun Industry and not the very similarly named Chinese company MJ Materials Technology.
Meibun Industry was set up in 2007 in Toyohashi, Japan, and has built factories in Indonesia and Malaysia. Its main business is to develop and produce recycled plastic materials using cutting-edge recycling and polymer technology combined with automation in sorting technology. This appears to be split across two subsidiaries, with MMA Chemical SDN BHD handling chemical recycling and MJ Material Technology SDN BHD taking care of mechanical recycling, both having several factories in Malaysia.
MJ Material’s latest factory, which is due to open in the spring of 2026, will cover some 51,000 square meters and is planned to produce around 75,000 tons per year. MJ Material will pay Konica Minolta to license its technology, with the exact fee depending on the revenue from customers.
Weng Wen Bin, President of MJ Material, commented, “I believe that the combination of this technology and our well-established manufacturing philosophy will enhance the value of recycled plastic materials and broaden their application, thereby realizing a clean, waste-free society.”
Konica Minolta will use its proprietary AI optimization model to propose molding conditions optimized for each part. This should lead to lower-cost mass production, even for parts that are difficult to mold.
Ryuji Kamata, Konica Minolta’s vice president and general manager of manufacturing and procurement for Digital Workplace and Professional Print, commented, “With technologies and solutions to address such challenges, we will offer recycled plastic materials optimized for each customer. Through recycled plastic materials, we will help realize a sustainable society by addressing customers’ challenges and expanding this business.”
Konica Minolta has been working with MJ Material since 2014 on the manufacturing of recycled materials, which is also the year that MJ Material was founded. The two companies have together marketed recycled plastic materials that use their respective technologies. It’s also worth noting that Konica Minolta itself has been using recycled plastic materials in its MFPs since 2012.
