Two major Italian market players, Maire Tecnimont S.P.A. and Hera Group, have joined forces to build a plant table to produce customised recycled materials with near-virgin qualities and properties that will meet the highest market standards and requirements.
Maire Tecnimont Group is a global leader in process engineering, while Hera Group’s Herambiente unit – Italy’s pioneer in the treatment of all types of waste – has 90 plants with significant know-how in the management of the entire environmental chain. The synergy between the two, in terms of both skills and resources, will result a plant unlike any other in Europe.
Under the strategic agreement signed between Aliplast, Hera Group’s subsidiary for the collection, recycling and conversion of plastics, and NextChem, Maire Tecnimont Group’s company for the development of projects and technologies for the energy transition, the technology and engineering, procurement and construction services to build the plant will be provided by NextChem. The highly digitalised plant will feature the proprietary MyReplast technology developed by NextChem for the upcycling of plastic waste into value- added polymers and include a high level of process automation.
“This agreement is a great result for our strategy to develop plastic waste upcycling through our MyReplast technology, starting with our plant in Bedizzole and which aims to expand at the European and international level,” said Pierroberto Folgiero, Maire Tecnimont and NextChem CEO.
Once fully operational, the plant – powered by green energy, thanks to Herambiente – will produce up to 30,000 tons of polymers per year.
As the first Italian company to be fully integrated, Aliplast already operates plants in France, Spain and Poland where it produces flexible PE films and PET sheets. The company annually manufactures 90,000 tons of finished products and regenerated polymers, with an over 90% recovery/recycling rate, in terms of volume.
The partnership with NextChem will allow Aliplast to further expand its recycling and compounding activities to include rigid plastics such as PP, HDPE and ABS, which are difficult to recycle effectively through mechanical processing.
“Plastics need a recycling industry based on technology and innovation, to handle difficult waste that mechanical recycling cannot treat. This is why Aliplast decided to pick NextChem’s upcycling technology to achieve sustainability targets and to meet customers’ needs, which increasingly require high-quality polymers”, said Tomaso Tommasi di Vignano, Executive Chairman of Hera Group.
Once up and running, Aliplast will be able to offer its customers a wider range of high-quality recycled plastics, in line with its aim to move towards a more advanced circular economy model, both to comply with EU and UN targets and to meet the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, of which Hera Group is a member.
“This partnership is necessary to combine excellence and strengths of players that can make a difference in the energy transition towards a more sustainable development model, which has been Hera Group’s goal for several years across all business lines,” said Di Vignano