Revalyu Resources (Kleinostheim, Germany; www.revalyu.com), which specialises in chemical PET recycling, plans to invest around USD 50 mn (EUR 45.6 mn) in the construction of a PET recycling plant in the US. The new facility is to be located in Statesboro, Georgia, where groundbreaking is planned for the first half of 2023 and commissioning is scheduled for 2024; Revalyu plans to employ around 70 people on the 175,000 m² final site.

After completion of the first phase, the plant should be able to recycle more than 32,000 t of used PET waste and process it into PET polymers (esters) and rPET chips. With further expansion, the plant would have a recycling capacity of up to 64,000 t. “This brings us closer to our goal of recycling more than 1,000 t of used PET bottles per day [editor’s note: about 320,000 t/y] by 2026,” said Jan van Kisfeld, managing director of Revalyu.

Following the acquisition of a majority stake by Heraeus (Hanau, Germany; www.heraeus.com) last year, former perPETual Technologies (Kleinostheim, Germany; www.perpetual-global.com) now operates under the Revalyu Resources name. For the Hanau-based technology group, which has been recycling precious metals for many years, this commitment meant entering the PET recycling business at the time (see Plasteurope.com of 19.05.2022).

Heraeus had announced its intention to invest a “mid three-digit million-dollar amount” in the coming years in the worldwide development of the infrastructure for recycling PET bottles.

Revalyu already operates a production facility in Nashik, Maharashtra, India, where used PET bottles are chemically recycled into filament yarns for the textile industry. The process developed by Revalyu reportedly uses monoethylene glycol as a chemical solvent. According to Heraeus, the recycling process uses 91% less energy and 67% less water than the conventional polyester production processes.