Recycling: Borouge signs partnership deal with Indian recycler; Carbios receives approvals for for PET biorecycling plant in France

Polyolefins maker Borouge has announced that it has signed an agreement with India’s Pashupati Group, which specialises in recycling. The collaboration will expand Borouge’s recycled polyolefin portfolio and facilitate joint efforts in advanced waste sorting and recycling capabilities, Borouge adds.

This strategic partnership reinforces Borouge’s role as a key enabler of the circular economy, strengthening our commitment to providing sustainable solutions for the value chain, it says.

Pashupati located in Kashipur, Uttarakhand, was founded in 2008 to undertake waste recycling.

In other news, Carbios has announced that it has been granted the building permit and operating authorisation for what it says is the world's first PET biorecycling plant, allowing construction to start. The plant will be built in Longlaville in the Grand-Est Region on a 13.7-ha site adjacent to the existing PET production plant of Indorama Ventures, its strategic partner. The facility is expected to be commissioned in 2025, processing up to 50,000 tonnes/year of post-consumer PET waste.

Carbios adds its technology enables PET circularity and offers an alternative raw material to virgin fossil-based monomers, allowing PET producers, chemical companies, waste management firms, public entities, and brands to have an effective solution to meet regulatory requirements and fulfill their sustainability commitments.

The plant will have a processing capacity of 50,000 tonnes/year of post-consumer PET waste (mostly waste that is non-recyclable mechanically, equivalent to 2 billion coloured PET bottles or 2.5 billion PET food trays) and will generate 150 direct and indirect jobs in the region.

Carbios submitted the authorisation requests to local authorities last December. Construction of the plant can start before the end of this year for commissioning in 2025.

The plant will be built on a 13.7-ha site acquired by Carbios on Indorama Ventures' existing PET plant site without suspensive conditions. The land area gives the possibility to double the facility's capacity.

Located near the borders with Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg, the plant's location is strategic for nearby waste supply. Moreover, Carbios' biorecycling technology can process complex waste that conventional technologies cannot recycle and produce food-grade products, enhancing the plant's flexibility for waste supply.

Carbios and Indorama Ventures will collaborate to ensure the feedstock supply of the Longlaville plant, located in a geographical area where the supply potential could reach 400,000 tonnes in 2023, and up to 500,000 tonnes in 2030 with improved selective collection.

Carbios has already secured an initial supply source by winning part of the CITEO tender for the biorecycling of multilayer food trays. The consortium composed of Carbios, Wellman (a subsidiary of Indorama Ventures), and Valorplast has been selected to handle 30% of the tonnage proposed by CITEO. Carbios will handle the portion of the flow consisting of multilayer food trays at its Longlaville plant starting in 2025.

In July 2023, Carbios successfully completed its capital increase for approximately EUR141 million, the largest capital increase on Euronext Growth since 2015. This amount is mainly intended to finance the construction of this plant, for which the total investment is estimated at around EUR230 million.

The portion of the investment not funded by the proceeds from the July 2023 capital increase is expected to be covered by Indorama Ventures, which plans to mobilize approximately EUR110 million for this project, French state subsidies of EUR30 million, and EUR12.5 million from the Grand-Est Region, as well as a portion of Carbios Group's available cash, which amounted to EUR78 million as of 30 June 2023.

(PRA)

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