Green news: Borealis shelves plans for recycling plant in Austria; Versalis ties up with Acea for recycled plastic feedstock in Italy

As the momentum for recycling plants increases, some companies are finding it challenging given the current market situation. As such, Austrian polyolefins maker Borealis has put its plans for a mechanical recycling plant for polyolefin waste at its site in Schwechat, Austria, on the backburner for now. The company says that an internal review had shown the facility would not be able to meet its performance targets under present market conditions.

It had planned to build an advanced mechanical recycling plant with a capacity of 60,000 tonnes/year of plastic waste, to come online this year. When it had made the announcements, following the takeover of plastics recycling company mtm plastics in 2016 and Ecoplast Kunststoffrecycling in 2018, it had said that the new plant would the next step on the path towards a circular economy for plastics.

The decision to push ahead with the plant was also based on the positive feedback received from the market on recycled polyolefins produced by a pilot plant in Lahnstein, Germany. The pilot plant was run by Borealis, together with sorting technology specialist Tomra and Zimmermann, a waste management company.

The design of the plant would have been based on Borealis’s advanced mechanical recycling technology platform. Borcycle M, which transforms polyolefin-based post-consumer waste into high-performance polymers suitable for demanding applications.

Instead, Borealis says it is relying on other sources for its Borcycle M, through its acquisition of Bulgarian recycler Integra Plastics last year.

Meanwhile in other news, Italy’s Versalis, Eni’s chemical company, and Acea Ambiente, a subsidiary of Acea operating in integrated waste management and energy recovery sectors, have tied up. The collaboration is focused on advancing the circular economy through joint recycling initiatives that recover value from post-consumer and post-industrial plastics.

The two companies will work together to analyse and select waste flows from Acea Ambiente’s facilities, with a view to assessing their suitability for Versalis’ recycling processes. The shared objective is to develop an integrated industrial supply chain, capable of producing high-quality recycled plastics, also via potential investments in new plants and the optimisation of existing processes.

The agreement furthermore foresees the joint assessment of chemical recycling solutions, including the Hoop technology, to recover value from plastic waste that cannot be recycled mechanically.

Adriano Alfani, CEO of Versalis, said that last year at the company’s facility in Porto Marghera, it launched a new plant for the production of plastics from mechanically recycled raw materials, with a production capacity of up to 20,000 tonnes/year of crystal polystyrene (r-GPPS) and expandable polystyrene (r-EPS).

Furthermore, in Mantua, the company’s Hoop chemical recycling demonstration plant for mixed plastic waste has been operational for a month; the industrial-scale version (40,000 tonnes/year) will be built in Priolo as part of the MoU on the Eni-Versalis Chemical Transformation Plan, he added.

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