Petrochemical group OMV (Vienna; www.omv.com) said its joint venture with German management service provider Interzero (Berlin; www.interzero.de) plans to build Europe’s largest, fully automated sorting plant for the chemical recycling of plastic waste in Walldürn, Germany.

The Austrian firm said it holds 89.9% of the venture, Circular Feedstock Walldürn, and reported that the 260,000 t/y plant is scheduled to go into operation in 2026 and create around 120 jobs.

OMV plans to invest more than EUR 170 mn in the plant, which is to process mainly mixed plastics that have not been recyclable so far, particularly from the separate collection of two major German recycling systems. 

Through the cooperation, OMV seeks to secure the supply of raw materials for its Austrian chemical recycling facility more than 600 km away in Schwechat, where a pilot plant using its process converts mechanically non-recyclable plastic waste into pyrolysis oil.

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Such a plant with a capacity of 16,000 t/y is currently being built at the Schwechat site. According to reports, the next step is to develop an industrial-scale plant with a capacity of 200,000 t/y by 2027.

Interzero operates five sorting facilities for light packaging in Germany and seperates more than 800,000 t/y of the refuse – around one-third of the country’s light packaging waste in – giving the company the largest sorting capacity in Europe.