Green news: Loop receives funding for recycling projects; Fuhai commissions BoReTech washing line for PET recycling

Canada’s Loop Industries, a clean technology company, has announced t is receiving funding of up to C$2.92 million as well as advisory services from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).

Supported through the NRC IRAP Clean Technology initiative, this multi-year project supports scale-up, engineering, operational efficiency, and deployment initiatives associated with Loop's proprietary Infinite Loop technology platform.

The non-dilutive funding will help advance Loop's proprietary technology platform and the company's transition toward commercial scale deployment. The project also supports initiatives focused on operational readiness, commercial execution, and lowers overhead expenditures ahead of commercialization.

"This project will enable us to further validate our technology platform and scale-up strategy," said Daniel Solomita, Founder/CEO of Loop Industries. "The support from NRC IRAP will help strengthen our operational and technical foundation as we prepare for broader deployment."

"By investing in companies that tackle pressing environmental challenges like hard-to-recycle plastic waste, our government is helping Canadian innovators scale promising clean technologies that strengthen our circular economy and move sustainable manufacturing closer to commercial reality," said The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions.

Loop Industries owns patented and proprietary technology that depolymerises no and low-value waste PET plastic and polyester fibre, including plastic bottles packaging and textiles such as carpets and clothing, into their base building block monomers DMT and MEG. The monomers are separated, purified and polymerised to create virgin-quality Loop & Twist branded PET resin suitable for use in food-grade packaging and polyester fibre.

In other news, Fuhai Group in Shandong, China, has commissioned BoReTech’s 15 tonne/hour PET bottle washing line, adding significant new food-grade PET recycling capacity to the country’s packaging materials sector.

The line is designed to process post-consumer PET bottles into food-grade rPET flakes, with expected output of 86,000 tonnes/year. Fuhai will use the recycled flakes to produce polyester sheet and bottle-grade PET resin for applications including beverage, food, pharmaceutical and consumer packaging.

The installation forms part of Fuhai’s US$1 billion polyester packaging materials project. The wider complex is intended to produce 1.5 million tonnes/year of virgin polyester packaging materials and combines polyester synthesis, sheet production and waste bottle flake recycling within a single site.

The washing line is designed for automated cleaning of post-consumer PET bottles, producing recycled flakes suitable for food-contact applications.

Fuhai’s packaging operations use two-reactor polyester polycondensation technology and direct melt-to-sheet processing. The company said the facility will produce polyester sheets and bottle-grade materials for packaging applications.

BoReTech said the project is expected to reduce energy consumption by more than 30% in the production of bottle-grade virgin PET resin and by more than 80% in sheet production compared with conventional processes. The company attributed these reductions to process integration, direct-melt technology and the incorporation of waste bottle recycling.

The commissioning represents a further expansion of large-scale food-grade PET recycling infrastructure in China.

Boretech is also set to commission China’s first PET tray-to-tray recycling plant in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province, marking a step toward expanding food-grade recycling beyond PET bottles. It will have a processing capacity of 28,000 tonnes/year of PET trays.

According to the company, it will produce hot-washed PET tray flakes suitable for food-contact thermoforming, enabling closed-loop tray-to-tray recycling.

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