GCR starts operating polyolefin recycling plant in Spain

GCR Sustainable Plastic Solutions has started operating a polyolefin recycling plant in Castellet i la Gornal, a municipality outside Barcelona, Spain, as per Sustainableplastics.

With an annual capacity to recycle over 130,000 tonnes of polyolefins, the Castellet i la Gornal plant is one of the largest in Europe. In comparison, Sweden’s Site Zero can sort up to 200,000 tonnes of plastic packaging a year.

Announcing the start-up on LinkedIn, the Spain-based material producer said it was proud to introduce the recycling plant after six years of planning and development.

The plant has capacity to recycle over 100,000 tonnes of post-consumer polyolefins and 30,000 tonnes of post-industrial polyolefins. It includes Erema recycling processing lines, Tomra optical sorting machinery, and one of Europe’s largest hot washing capacities for high-purity recycled materials.

The facility also includes in-house laboratories ensuring strict quality control and performance testing, specialised deodorisation and batch homogenisation, and a closed-loop water system to minimise water consumption.

The new plant’s capacity will feed into GCR’s Ciclic portfolio of recycled polyolefins as well the Granic range of mineral-filled masterbatches and compounds.

The Ciclic portfolio includes recycled HDPE, LDPE, LLDPE, and PP. GCR says integrating the recycled plastic grades into formulations can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90%.

The Granic product line combines ultrafine minerals like calcium carbonate (CaCO3), talc, or silica, with PE and PP. The addition of Granic can account for up to 70% of the final plastic content, resulting in a significant reduction of polymers while enhancing the mechanical properties of end applications.

GCR has a combined production capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year. It exports 85% of its products to over 100 countries.

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Gulbrandsen, a global leader in the production of specialty polyethylene waxes and polymers, today announced its plans to build additional polyethylene wax manufacturing capacity and a new functional polymers plant at its site in Dahej, India, said the company.

Expected to be operational by mid-2026, this expansion will help Gulbrandsen increase its specialty polymers and wax production to meet growing global demand, ensure supply reliability, and widen its product portfolio.

Specialty polymers and waxes are building blocks for essential materials used in everyday life. End-use-related product lines include expanded polystyrene (EPS), mold release agents, personal care & cosmetics, adhesives, inks, and coatings.

"This investment underscores our commitment to serving our customers worldwide," said Ron Hatchell, Global Business Director at Gulbrandsen. "By expanding our production capacity and diversifying our product offerings, we are strengthening our ability to meet evolving customer needs and solidifying our leadership position in the industry."

In addition to this major expansion, Gulbrandsen has recently completed debottlenecking efforts that have unlocked additional capacity at its existing wax plant in Vadodara.

The new facilities in Dahej will incorporate state-of-the-art technology and adhere to the highest standards of safety and environmental sustainability, reflecting Gulbrandsen's dedication to responsible manufacturing.

Gulbrandsen is a global chemical manufacturing company specializing in high-quality chemical solutions for a range of applications. Gulbrandsen is the leading manufacturer of Specialty Polyethylene Waxes.
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Stronger legislative frameworks and initiatives for supply infrastructure are expected to balance recycled plastics supply and demand; however, a slowdown in capital investment continues to weigh on the circular economy’s growth, as per Chemweek.

“We have to change the consumers’ behavior,” Matthew Seidner, partner at McKinsey & Co. said on March 19. “There needs to be more bottles put into recycling bins in order to increase recycling rates.”

According to Seidner, despite the slowdown in capacity additions for recycled plastics, the plastic packaging industry is expected to grow in the following years. “Plastics are here to stay,” he said.

Globally, 2 billion people lack access to waste collection services, while 3 billion people lack access to controlled waste disposal facilities, according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

The EU is taking the lead in enacting robust legislation, such as the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, which helps support sustainability efforts. In contrast, the US continues to face a lack of cohesive policy, with only five states – California, Washington, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maine – having enacted Extended Producer Responsibility laws for packaging. Each state’s approach differs, adding to regulatory complexity.

At the global level, the outlook for a multilateral plastics treaty remains bleak after negotiations fell through in 2024. Global instability has further complicated matters.

“Eight of the 10 most populous countries have had a change in government,” said Olivier Maronneaud, global analytics lead/methanol and plastic circularity at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “The world is not in a position for a multilateral agreement.”

According to the panelists, a decline in capital investment is also slowing progress for companies focusing on sustainability. Several chemical recycling projects have been delayed due to financial and operational challenges, although some are progressing, backed by well-established corporations that have the financial resources to invest.

However, chemical recycling projects have been steadily reaching final investment decisions, Maronneaud said.

John Roberts, managing director at Mizuho Securities, highlighted four publicly traded green companies listed on NASDAQ – PureCycle Technologies, Danimer Scientific, Origin Materials and Loop Industries. However, investor confidence for sustainable companies has slowed down, as Wall Street investors are currently focusing on artificial intelligence and data centers, Roberts said.

“When investing increased for sustainability-driven companies, the thought was that sustainability had the same profitability as virgin resin,” Roberts said.

Investment has further been shaken following Danimer Scientific’s recent bankruptcy, leaving investors closely watching major petrochemical companies’ large-scale projects, such as Eastman Chemical’s planned waste plastics recycling facilities.

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Resonac Corp. and Microwave Chemical Co., Ltd. (MWCC; Osaka, Japan) have jointly launched a project to establish plastic raw material manufacturing technology that does not rely on fossil resources, as per Chemweek.

This initiative further develops and strengthens the two companies’ collaborative efforts that began in 2022.

“While there are pyrolytic oil-conversion technologies that transform highly sorted or single-type used plastics into mixed oils (such as naphtha-equivalent oils) and chemical recycling technologies that convert them directly into basic chemical products like ethylene and propylene, the volumes of such sorted or single-type used plastics are limited,” said Resonac.

Additionally, sorting and separating plastics incurs costs, and many types of plastics are difficult to separate. “Therefore, establishing a chemical recycling technology that can thermally decompose used plastics, which are discharged in a mixed state, directly into basic chemical products without extensive sorting is expected to contribute significantly to further reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” it added.

Resonac and MWCC have been collaboratively working on the development of a technology that decomposes used plastics by irradiating them with microwaves to produce basic chemical products. Microwave heating, which is also used in microwave ovens, transmits energy specifically to the target material. This technology focuses microwave energy on used plastics, enabling efficient decomposition into basic chemical products.

In this project, the companies will develop novel pyrolysis technology that directly converts and recycles actual mixed plastics into basic chemical products, aiming to produce useful basic chemicals with a yield of over 60 weight percent (wt%) and to reduce CO2 emissions during production.

They aim to establish recycling technology that can handle a variety of used plastics by conducting the pyrolysis of plastics using new methods such as microwave heating at a demonstration scale of several thousand metric tons per year.

Both companies have previously conducted experiments using model systems with virgin plastics, focusing on optimizing decomposition reaction conditions and processes.

In a ternary system of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS), they achieved a yield of 80 wt% of useful basic chemicals. In a more realistic quinary system that includes polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), the yield reached 70 wt%.

In this project, the companies will first select the decomposition process and reactor types at the laboratory experimental and bench (small-scale prototype) levels, and then proceed with scale-up to pilot (medium-scale prototype) and large-scale demonstration levels while optimizing the operation conditions.

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Italy’s Eni SpA (Rome) and Saipem SpA (Milan) have extended an existing collaboration agreement between the companies for new Eni projects, primarily focused on the construction of new biorefineries and the conversion of existing refineries into biorefineries, as per Chemweek.

Eni said March 27 it intends to “further develop its biorefining capacity” via development of new initiatives to produce biofuels for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) for land and sea mobility.

In line with the agreement, Eni said it recently awarded Saipem a contract for the start-up of detailed engineering, procurement services and the purchase of critical equipment for the previously announced upgrading of its Enilive biorefinery at Porto Marghera, Italy. The project will increase the plant’s annual capacity from 400,000 metric tons to 600,000 metric tons and see the site producing SAF by 2027, it said.

In November 2024, Eni also awarded Saipem a contract for the conversion of its Livorno refinery into a biorefinery with a capacity of 500,000 metric tons of biogenic charge. The project involves the application of Ecofining technology developed by Eni and Honeywell UOP for the production of HVO hydrogenated biofuels. The Livorno plant will be built to also enable, with appropriate technical modifications, a possible subsequent upgrading to produce SAF, it said.

The total value of the two contracts is currently put at approximately €320 million, Eni said.

Eni, through its subsidiary Enilive, has a current biorefining production capacity of 1.65 million metric tons per year (MMt/y) and has previously stated a goal of increasing capacity to over 5 MMt/y by 2030.

Earlier this month, Eni’s chemicals subsidiary Versalis SpA (Milan) announced the opening of a new plant at Porto Marghera for the production of plastics made wholly or partially from mechanically recycled raw materials. The facility has an annual production capacity of up to 20,000 metric tons of recycled general-purpose polystyrene and expandable polystyrene (r-EPS), using waste EPS as feedstock.

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