Borouge, a joint venture between the United Arab Emirates oil company Adnoc and Austria’s Borealis, signed a memorandum of understanding with Tadweer, Abu Dhabi’s waste management centre, to explore opportunities in the management and adoption of best practices in waste management, sorting, and mechanical recycling of polymers.
The Abu Dhabi-based petrochemical and polymer manufacturer has an annual capacity of 5 million tonnes of polyolefins and plans to increase this to 6.4 million tonnes by 2025. It added recyclates to its portfolio in 2021, at a time when the United Arab Emirates’ plastic recycling business was still nascent, although the industry has since then continued on a slow path of development, and is now moving towards food- and medical-grade applications, mostly driven by consumer demand and goals of multinational companies operating in the Middle East. The country has announced it will ban single use plastic bags by January 2024 and the import of plastic cutlery, drinks cups, boxes, and Styrofoam by January 2026.
Through the new partnership, the two companies intend to explore different waste sorting and mechanical recycling technologies to produce high-quality polymer recyclates. They also plan to establish business development and benchmarking frameworks through joint investments in foreign countries (brown and greenfield assets). Other activities will include the launch of public initiative and campaigns to boost awareness about best practices in plastics waste management and recycling.
“We are very pleased to collaborate with Tadweer to promote and implement stronger circular economy initiatives in the UAE,” said Hazeem Sultan Al Suwaidi, Chief Executive Officer of Borouge. “Together, we are exploring innovative ways of sorting and recycling polymers in alignment with national and international best practices.”