Landbell and Carbios sign PET recycling co-operation MOU

German packaging producer responsibility organisation Landbell and the French technology firm Carbios plan to cooperate to recycle post-consumer PET waste, said the company.

Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU), Landbell will supply 15,000 tonnes per year of PET flakes from Germany to a recycling facility that Carbios is building in Longlaville in the East of France. This first industrial-scale "biorecycling" plant would start accepting material from Landbell in 2026. Carbios, which is investing around €230m in the plant, says it will use its proprietary enzyme-based depolymerisation process to produce the monomers PTA and MEG from waste PET and polyester.

The PET flakes will not be made from bottles, as mechanical recycling of this waste stream is working very well, said Landbell CEO Jan Patrick Schulz and Carbios CEO Emmanuel Ladent in a joint online press conference. Instead, the focus is on packaging such as multi-layer trays and opaque containers made of PET.

We remind, companies from across the flexible food packaging supply chain have partnered to launch a new snack packaging that contains 50 percent-recycled plastic and meets stringent food contact requirements. The new packaging was launched in late 2023 in the United Kingdom and Ireland for Sunbites, a snack brand owned by PepsiCo. The packaging is made using an advanced recycling process—a complementary approach to mechanical recycling—that enables the recycled materials to satisfy the demanding European Union regulatory requirements for applications such as food-contact packaging, contact sensitive and medical devices.

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Rohm GmbH increased the prices for its PMMA and PMMI molding compounds, which are marketed under the trademarks "Plexiglas" and "Pleximid", effective March 15, 2024, said the company.

As far as permissible under existing agreements, the increase will be up to 0.18 Euro/kg for all grades in the regions Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

We remind, Roehm, a major European producer of methyl methacrylate (MMA), will acquire SABIC's polycarbonate film and sheet operations in the first half of 2024. The agreement does not cover SABIC's polycarbonate (PC) extrusion business but includes its Functional Forms division, which offers a wide range of polycarbonate (PC) films and sheets primarily sold under the LEXAN brand.

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Shell Chemicals and petrochemical company Braskem have entered an agreement to bring bio-attributed and bio-circular polypropylene to the US market, said the company.

Shell will supply the feedstocks to allow Braskem to manufacture polypropylene for sustainable options to meet growing consumer demand in the packaging, film, automotive and consumer goods markets.

Shell is replacing hydrocarbon feedstock with a bio-attributed and bio-circular feedstock in its polypropylene product.

The independently certified materials are based on a mass balance approach. This is an independent accounting process widely used across the chemical industry.

Both companies aim to reduce their carbon emissions, with Shell’s target being to reduce absolute emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to 2016 levels on a net basis. The agreement is a step for them both towards achieving their sustainability goals.

We remind, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) denied plans to bid bid to acquire a stake in the Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem. The company clarified in a statement today, Feb. 21, shared with Argaam, that media reports based on Brazilian newspaper Valor about the deal are incorrect.

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New Energy Chemicals, the new subsidiary of biofuel and biochemicals developer New Energy Blue, is to provide material science company Dow with biobased ethylene for the production of low-carbon plastics, said Packaging-gateway.

New Energy Chemicals’ biobased fuel and chemicals are derived from crop residues. In late 2025, its biomass refinery in Mason City, Iowa, US will begin converting local corn stalks into between 16 and 20m gallons per year of highly decarbonised (HD) cellulosic ethanol and 120,000 tons of clean HD lignin. Lignin has high value as a fossil substitute in markets such as that for decarbonising steel production.

Millions of HD gallons will head to Texas, where New Energy Chemicals will convert it into bio-based ethylene. This will be transported via a pipeline to Dow‘s US Gulf Coast operations for the production of renewable plastics for fast-growing end markets such as packaging.

Dow’s use of bio-based feedstocks from New Energy Blue is expected to be certified by ISCC [International Sustainability and Carbon Certification] Plus, an international sustainability certification programme with a focus on the traceability of raw materials within the supply chain.

As Dow intends to mix agriculture-based ethylene into its existing manufacturing process, ISCC Plus’s chain of custody certification would allow its customers to account for bio-based materials in their supply chains.

We remind, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule today prohibiting ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos, the last form of asbestos currently used in or imported to the United States. The EPA said the ban is the first rule to be finalized under the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances and Control Act (TSCA) and “marks a major milestone for chemical safety after more than three decades of inadequate protections and serious delays.”

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BP’s 435,000-bpd Whiting, Indiana (U.S.), refinery has returned to normal operations for the first time since a February plantwide power outage, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Gasoline prices in the Chicago-area climbed by at least 20 cents a gallon in the days following the Feb. 1 power outage at the Whiting plant, the largest refinery in the U.S. Midwest.

"The Whiting Refinery is back to normal operations," company spokesperson Christina Audisho said in a emailed statement.

BP in February planned to begin preparing the Whiting refinery for restart late that month and would carry the restart out in the first part of March.

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