After recently announcing that it plans to buy all the chemically reclaimed raw materials from Belgian recycling start-up Renasci (Oostende; www.renasci.be) and feed them to its Finnish cracker in Porvoo (see Plasteurope.com of 21.06.2021), Austrian polyolefin and base chemicals manufacturer Borealis (Vienna; www.borealisgroup.com) has now taken a 10% stake in the company. No financial details were disclosed.

The investment is a step towards Borealis’ goal to sell some 350,000 t of recycled polyolefins by 2025, CEO Thomas Gangl told Plasteurope.com. He noted that the two-stage “Smart Chain Processing” developed by the Belgian start-up combines mechanical and chemical recycling and maximises material recovery to leave only 5% of the original waste as residual materials. Prior to taking up his position as CEO of Borealis on 1 April 2021, Gangl was on the board of majority shareholder OMV (Vienna / Austria; www.omv.at).

Part of the deal has Borealis purchasing both the roughly 20,000 t of chemically recycled raw materials from the Rinasci recycling centre and the same amount of mechanically recycled plastic material. The plant, which was recently put into operation, is expected to process around 120,000 t/y of dried household and industrial waste. In addition, both cooperation partners together want to promote the construction of further plants of this type. Gangl did not give an exact timeframe or the amount of the budget allocated for it.