Daily News

Chemical recycling of widely used vinyl polymers (VPs) is one of the key technologies required for realizing a sustainable society.

With effect from January 2, 2024, SÜDPACK (Ochsenhausen, Germany) has acquired additional shares of CARBOLIQ GmbH (Remscheid, Germany) and appointed Dirk Hardow as Managing Director.

In its efforts to scale-up chemical recycling, Neste (Espoo, Finland) has successfully concluded another series of industrial-scale processing runs with increasing volumes of liquefied waste plastic at its refinery in Porvoo, Finland.

LyondellBasell (Rotterdam, Netherlands) has been selected to receive a EUR 40 million grant from the European Union (EU) Innovation Fund. The grant will support the fully electrified, industrial-scale advanced recycling demonstration plant the company plans to build at its Wesseling, Germany site.

Toray Industries (Tokyo, Japan), recently announced the successful development of recycled carbon fibre (rCF) derived from the production process of the Boeing 787 components using Toray’s advanced carbon fibre, TORAYCA™.

OMV the integrated energy, fuels & feedstock, and chemicals & materials company headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and Synthos (Oświęcim, Poland), the biggest synthetic rubber producer in Europe with a global reach, recently announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

APK AG will bring in the new year with its corporate strategy stronger than ever. The company from Merseburg/Leuna, Germany, devoted itself in 2023 to putting in place key elements of its successful expansion as well as to the planning and construction of its next large-scale Newcycling® plant.

Global sports company PUMA (Herzogenaurach, Germany) has recently announced that it has scaled up its textile recycling innovation, RE:FIBRE, replacing recycled polyester with RE:FIBRE technology in all Puma football Club and Federation replica jerseys from 2024 onwards.

Trinseo (Wayne, PA, USA), a specialty material solutions provider, is helping advance the potential of sustainable plastics with the inauguration of its next generation, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) depolymerization plant in Rho, Italy.

PureCycle (Orlando, FL, USA), recently, sent out a commercial shipment of Ultra-Pure Recycled (UPR) resin to Milliken & Company (Spartanburg, SC, USA), a diversified manufacturer with expertise in polymer additive and colourant technology.

Global brand air up® has launched a new reusable bottle line for the European market made with Eastman (Kingsport, TN, USA) Tritan™ Renew that further expands the air up mission to eliminate single-use plastic waste.

Carbios (Clermont-Ferrand, France), a pioneer in the development and industrialization of biological technologies to reinvent the life cycle of plastics and textiles, recently announced the publication in ACS Catalysis, one of the world’s most influential scientific journals (Impact Factor 13.7), of an article entitled “Assessment of Four Engineered PET Degrading Enzymes Considering Large-Scale Industrial Applications”.

Braskem (São Paulo, Brazil) and Vitol S.A. (Geneva, Switzerland) have announced an agreement for circular feedstock derived from plastic waste.

Pacur (Oshkosh, WI, USA), a leading custom sheet extruder in the medical space, has announced its use of Eastman’s (Kingsport, TN, USA) Eastar™ Renew 6763 to produce rigid, thermoformed, sterile barrier packaging.

Chemical recycling is seen as an important step towards a circular economy.

Covestro has developed an innovative process for recycling polycarbonate, i.e. polychain plastics. In this process, plastics are converted back into their monomers, a precursor of plastics, so that they can be fed back into the production process as alternative raw materials.

Today, scarce metals and unsustainable materials are used to build conductive circuits in electronic devices.

TotalEnergies, Aramco and SABIC have for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa successfully converted oil derived from plastic waste into ISCC+ certified circular polymers. The plastic pyrolysis oil, also called plastic waste derived oil (PDO), was processed at the SATORP refinery jointly owned by Aramco and TotalEnergies, in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

PureCycle (Orlando, FL, USA), successfully produced the first run of Ultra-Pure Recycled (UPR) resin from post-industrial recycled material at commercial scale.

Neste has made the final investment decision to commence construction of upgrading facilities for liquefied plastic waste at its Porvoo refinery in Finland.

Given that management of end-of-life tyres (ELTs) can have a major impact on the environment, more than 176,000 tonnes of ELTs are collected in Spain each year according to data from the SIGNUS collection system.

The Renewable Materials Conference in Siegburg/Cologne (Germany) will start tomorrow and might turn out to be the must-go event of 2023.

In mid-April, Alex Thielen, editor of bioplastics MAGAZINE sat down with Mateusz (Mat) Wielopolski and John Sewell who host the podcast Plastic. Climate. Future. to talk about bioplastics MAGAZINE, the concept of renewable carbon and bioplastics overall.

TotalEnergies Corbion (Gorinchem, the Netherlands) and Coexpan (Madrid, Spain) are launching a PLA biobased cup using recycled PLA, available in both white and high transparency.

The aviation industry is increasingly using biocomposite materials in its components to mitigate their environmental impact. Biocomposites use natural fibres for reinforcement and resins from renewable sources.

Honeywell UOP (Des Plaines, IL, USA) recently announced that Biotrend Energy (Istanbul, Türkiye) signed equipment supply, production license, and warranty agreements to build Türkiye’s first commercialized advanced waste recycling plant using Honeywell UOP UpCycle Process Technology.

Carbios (Clermont-Ferrand, France) is geared up for the global commercialization of its PET biorecycling technology.

Neste (Espoo, Finland) has successfully concluded its second series of industrial-scale processing runs with liquefied waste plastic at its refinery in Porvoo, Finland.

New research shows an 80 % reduction in global warming potential (GWP), when compared to incineration, by processing waste plastic via a unique advanced recycling solution known as HydroPRS™, in a paper published by experts at WMG, University of Warwick (Coventry, UK).

Neste (Espoo, Finland), Uponor (Vantaa, Finland), Wastewise (Nokia, Finland) and Borealis (Vienna, Austria) have successfully produced pipes made of cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) which was based on feedstock gained from chemically recycled post-industrial waste plastic from PEX pipe production, using an ISCC PLUS certified mass-balancing approach.