\u2018The underlying technology does actually work. It\u2019s getting to the point where yields are making sense as well,\u2019 says Lee Hodder, managing director for carbon capture and circular solutions at Viridor. He says that Viridor\u2019s Quantafuel process achieved around 70\u201375% yield of pyrolysis oil by weight, from plastic going into its process. But last month Viridor closed its three Quantafuel chemical recycling plants across Scandinavia, saying the sector was not commercially viable.<\/p>\n
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You want certainty to be able to underpin investments, because you\u2019re talking of hundreds of millions of dollars<\/p>\n
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Earlier this year, a UK chemical recycling pioneer, Plastic Energy, went into administration. It has two operational plants in Spain (that are not part of the insolvency process) as well as joint ventures to run plants located at petrochemical sites owned by Sabic in the Netherlands and TotalEnergies in France.<\/p>\n
Joint administrator, Geoff Rowley, said that while the company had developed \u2018market leading\u2019 recycling processes, it had suffered from a European market downturn and had been unable to operate sustainably. He said the goal was to sell the group\u2019s primary assets including its intellectual property, patents and shares in the joint ventures.<\/p>\n
When Chemistry World spoke to Plastic Energy\u2019s managing director Ian Temperton late last year, pyrolysis oil was expensive \u2013 trading at around twice the price of the equivalent fossil feedstock. The industry requires financial and regulatory support to scale to a point where it becomes competitive with fossil materials.<\/p>\n
Analysis by the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology<\/a> suggests that \u2013 before Quantafuel\u2019s closure \u2013 Europe\u2019s chemical recycling capacity was 289,000 tonnes per year, with 65 projects in the pipeline. However, nine of those projects have already been cancelled.<\/p>\n While key policies such as the EU\u2019s Packaging and Packing Waste regulation (PPWR), extended producer responsibility (EPR) and landfill bans are all coming down the track<\/a>, Hodder says a lack of consistency in their application and an uncertain pace of implementation is challenging.<\/p>\n \u2018We invested ahead of regulation, but when you see uncertainty playing out in the market, it\u2019s difficult to just continue to commit spending unless you know that there\u2019s going to be a real firm inflection point. The timing is the biggest uncertainty.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018You want certainty to be able to underpin investments, because you\u2019re talking of hundreds of millions of dollars for these types of investments, and then on the other side, you\u2019ve got off-takers wanting more certainty from regulation before they commit to multi-year contracts.\u2019<\/p>\n The EU has adopted new rules to allow chemically recycled content to be used in plastic bottles for drinks, accounted for using a mass balance approach that tracks total inputs and outputs of recycled material, rather than requiring a full chain-of-custody for recycled materials \u2013 something the industry has been asking for.<\/p>\n But Finnish chemical recycler, Neste, says the rules mean existing refineries can\u2019t be used. A spokesperson said: \u2018this approach must change to be fit-for-purpose for other plastics, where refinery upgrading steps are vital for handling contaminants which prevent the use of recycled feedstock at scale in steam crackers.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n You want great availability of plastic waste streams, but you also want cheap energy, and proximity to chemical processing markets<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u2018Policy is particularly important on the feedstock (the waste plastic) side, to be able to drive changes to do greater collection and sorting of waste. And I think that is lagging,\u2019 says Steve Mahon, chief executive of Mura Technology. Indeed, in mid-July, the UK government announced a 3-year delay to mandatory collection of films and flexible packaging in England<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Dow](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/550361_2k0y57r_641174_crop_crop.jpg\")
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