Paris-based petrochemical group TotalEnergies (www.totalenergies.com) and French recycler Paprec (La Courneuve; www.paprec.com) have signed a long-term commercial agreement to develop a “French value chain for advanced recycling” of plastics film wastes.

Under the deal, Citeo (Paris; www.citeo.com) will provide a stream of flexible plastics waste sorted from post-consumer packaging for the Paprec Plastiques 80 plant in Amiens, France, where a sorting and preparation line will be built.

TotalEnergies plans to process this French waste at its domestic pyrolysis plant in Grandpuits, where it will use the output to produce recycled plastics with the same properties as food-grade virgin plastics.

The plant – under construction by TotalEnergies as 60% owner and Plastic Energy (London; www.plasticenergy.com) as 40% shareholder – is expected to process 15,000 t/y of waste and become operational in 2024.

Related: Huge market potential for chemical recycling in France

TotalEnergies and Colines (Nibbia, Italy; www.colines.it) separately announced the successful proof of concept (POC) of an unlaminated and recyclable stand-up pouch for food-contact applications.

Currently, the market reference is composed of a multi-material film, resulting in non-recyclable packaging. The partners said the development of their pouch allowed for a decrease in packaging thickness.

The Machine Direction Orientation (MDO) film has been produced on the Colines’ Polycast cast line as well as the MDO line, providing a low-density sealing layer on one side and a high-density stiff layer on the other. The MDO-PE film formulation is composed of TotalEnergies’ Supertough and Lumicene brand PE grades.