The construction of new plants announced two years ago is starting to take shape, according to Swedish engineering services provider Afry (Stockholm; www.afry.com), which said Germany’s APK (Merseburg; www.apk-ag.de) intends to build a domestic chemical recycling facility with an input capacity of around 40,000 t/y.

Afry reported that it has been contracted to plan the engineering and estimate the amount of spending required, which APK needs for its final investment decision. This preliminary planning is to be completed in Q3 2023.

APK plans to increase the recycling of difficult and non-recyclable flexible packaging, which is said to account for the majority of the mixed plastics waste from post-consumer feeds. For this, the company uses a solvent-based process called Newcycling, a method combining mechanical and chemical reclamation said to be effective for multi-layer plastics packaging made with different resins.

APK has secured two major backers for potential projects this year, US polyolefins group LyondellBasell (Houston, Texas; www.lyondellbasell.com) and Lego owner Kirkbi (Billund, Denmark; www.kirkbi.com), which together with other co-investors have acquired minority holdings in APK worth EUR 130 mn.

APK already operates a facility using its technology with an input capacity of 20,000 t/y at its headquarters site in Merseburg. LDPE recyclate produced at the plant is marketed under the brand name Mersalen, and the resulting polyamide recyclate is known as Mersamid.

Related: Merseburg site EuCertPlast certified for recycling film waste

Afry most recently reported global sales of SEK 24 bn (EUR 2.1 bn) with 19,000 employees.