Plastics technology licensor Axens and plastics recycling company SOREMA have announced a partnership to provide integrated solutions for the chemical and mechanical recycling of plastic waste.
The companies aim to provide their clients with integrated and optimized solutions to maximize the yield and revenues from the waste feedstock to the recycled plastic.
Axens is offering a suite of commercial technologies (the TAC Process developed by Plastic Energy, followed by Axens’ Rewind Max and Rewind Mix processes) to produce ‘a recycled naphtha equivalent to petrochemical naphtha through the proven pyrolysis pathway’, said to enable the production of food-grade recycled polyolefins (polyethylene, polypropylene).
Additionally, Axens markets the Rewind PET process which can reportedly recycle all types of PET waste into a high-quality virgin-like recycled PET, suitable for all PET applications including food contact packaging and textiles.
SOREMA says its mechanical treatment operations for plastic waste allows it to optimize feedstock preparation for advanced recycling units designed by Axens. Both companies are active worldwide, with their integrated solutions ranging from basic engineering design to the delivery of prefabricated modular units.
Stéphane Fédou, Axens’ Plastic Circular Economy vice-president, said: “Thanks to this cooperation with SOREMA, we can now offer our clients recycling solutions which maximize the valorization of their plastic waste stream. This partnership illustrates the possible and necessary synergies between mechanical recycling and chemical recycling, at the service of the development of a true circular economy of plastics, worldwide.”
At the end of 2024, BASF announced a collaboration with Endress+Hauser, TechnoCompound and the Universities of Bayreuth and Jena to study the improvement of mechanical recycling for plastics, aiming to identify the composition of plastic waste during recycling and improve the quality of recycled plastics. With funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the project will combine measuring techniques with artificial intelligence (AI), using spectroscopic methods which interpret how the material interacts with light to gain information about the chemical structure of the recycled plastics.
More recently, the European Commission approved a €500 million French scheme (under EU State Aid rules) to support chemical recycling that converts mixed and/or contaminated plastic waste back into ‘virgin-like’ raw materials. Types of plastic waste involved in the scheme include trays, films, non-beverage bottles and textile materials with a certain amount of polyester content.
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