Plastic Energy (London / UK; www.plasticenergy.com) continues to make strides toward realising a circular economy in Europe and beyond. In addition to its recent partnership with French technology group Axens (Rueil-Malmaison; www.axens.net) in Europe (see Plasteurope.com of 17.11.2021), the company has signed a new advanced recycling partnership with US recycling company Freepoint Eco-Systems (Stamford, Connecticut; www.freepointecosystems.com) and TotalEnergies (Paris / France; www.totalenergies.com).

Similar to its other collaborations, the new US project will leverage Plastic Energy’s technology to convert plastics waste into virgin-quality polymer that can be used to produce food-grade packaging. From mid-2024, the companies aim to be able to process and convert 33,000 t/y of post-consumer plastics waste into Plastic Energy’s “Tacoil”-branded pyrolysis oil for use as feedstock for TotalEnergies’ US production facilities in Texas.

The new US plans build on a 60/40 joint venture between TotalEnergies and Plastic Energy announced in September 2020 (see Plasteurope.com of 30.09.2020). This foresees the partners building a plastics waste conversion facility with a capacity of 15,000 t/y at the French group’s Grandpuits refinery site. This project is expected to be operational in early 2023.

For Plastic Energy, The Texas plant will be its first-ever in the US. Carlos Monreal, the company’s founder and CEO, said the region “has enormous potential” for the plastics-to-plastics advanced recycling market, especially as the UK recycling specialist’s process enables the utilisation of waste that would otherwise go to landfill and at the same time reduces the need for fossil fuels. “TotalEnergies itself hopes to increase its use of recycled and renewable polymers to 30% by 2030,” said Valérie Goff, senior vice-president of Polymers at TotalEnergies.