Green news: Gazprom Neft opens plastics recycling plant in Russia; Sulzer to provide PLA tech to India’s Balrampur Chini Mills

Russian oil company Gazprom Neft has started up a plant to recycle plastic packaging into secondary granules in Gatchina, Leningrad region with a capacity of 8,600 tonnes/year.

The new plant will handle the complete cycle of recycling plastic packaging made of polypropylene and polyethylene into feedstock for subsequent use, the company said.

The company will ship the produced feedstock, secondary polymer granules to Russian manufacturers of plastic products, as well as use them in-house to produce waterproofing materials for industrial and civilian construction.

The new plant has modern plastic recycling equipment and a closed-cycle water treatment system to ensure environmentally-friendly production, the company said. "The filtration equipment makes it possible to capture small plastic particles, purify the water and return it to the production cycle," the press release said.

Gazprom Neft expects that the use of secondary granules within the company will reach 3,200 tonnes/year by 2030.

"Using recycled raw materials is more cost effective and the recycling process is safe for the environment. Our plastic materials recycling project is an important step for the development of a closed-loop economy in the country. Its implementation will make it possible to return all the plastic that we and our partners produce into the production process," Gazprom Neft's head of petrochemicals and LPG, Igor Korolev said in the press release.

In other news, Swiss technology firm Sulzer says it will supply its polylactic acid (PLA) production technology to Balrampur Chini Mills Limited (BCML) to support the construction of India’s first bioplastics plant, which will produce 75,000 tonnes/year of compostable, wholly recyclable bioplastic per year using sugarcane as a feedstock. It will be located adjacent to one of BCML’s sugar cane processing facilities, enabling BCML to use the country’s main agricultural crop to make a major contribution to the nation’s sustainability aims.

Single-use plastic waste has been a major environmental issue in the world and many countries are encouraging the adoption of bioplastics, especially for packaging materials. PLA is a bio-based, compostable and wholly recyclable biopolymer that is produced from renewable feedstocks, such as sugar cane. The technologies required to enable the production process for this material have been developed and optimized by Sulzer. They have been designed to help industry meet the increasing global demand for high-performance, more sustainable products in an economically viable way.

Balrampur Chini Mills Limited is one of India’s leading sugar producers with a crushing capacity of 80,000 tonnes/day spread across ten plants. The company is already the largest producer of bioethanol for fuel in India and also uses waste products from the sugar mills for power generation. The introduction of this new bioplastic manufacturing capability is the next step in the company’s journey to Net Zero.

Playing a key role in the realisation of the plant, Sulzer will deliver the manufacturing technologies for the key process stages including lactide synthesis, lactide purification and polymerisation.

Since the sugar market is heavily regulated and exports carefully managed, the potential for increasing margins is limited. In contrast, the demand for bioplastics is growing rapidly as more applications look to take advantage of the environmental benefits and reduced energy costs in production.

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