This year, five recyclers in the Netherlands alone were compelled to shut down operations due to economic and competitive pressure. Now, one is re-entering the fray.
“Today we announce that Ioniqa is making a restart,” said founder Tonnis Hooghoudt in a statement on 10 December. “This preserves the unique knowledge and expertise of the company in order to realise a sustainable solution for plastics. We are well aware of the current headwinds in the European plastic recycling market. We maintain our vision that advanced plastic recycling will become big, partly in view of the ambitious EU targets from 2030 onwards.”
Headquartered in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Ioniqa filed for bankruptcy protection in October of this year, having determined that ‘achieving a positive cash flow from its advanced polyester recycling technology will take too long’.
The glycolysis-based chemical recycling technology company, a spin-off from the Eindhoven University of Technology has been operating a demonstration facility at Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen, the Netherlands, since summer 2019. The demo plant, with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes a year, produces recycled PET for food-contact applications. In simple terms, the PET waste is submerged in a glycol solution, which causes the molecular structure of the polymer to start to dissolve slowly. The resultant monomers can be used to produce virgin-quality PET that is safe for food contact applications.
This January, the company received funding from Infinity Recycling’s Circular Plastics Fund to help scale up and bring its technology to market, including broadening its feedstock to include polyester fibres. However, by October, it became clear that large-scale deployment of its PET depolymerisation technology was ‘economically unfeasible’ under current market conditions and the company’s current set-up. The company also pointed the finger at the failure of the authorities to ensure a timely ‘implementation of regulated mandatory standards for meaningful recycling levels’. These are “too far out into the future,” the company said.
Going forward, the company will shed approximately half the employees and close down the Geleen facility as part of its downsizing operation. While continuing to develop the technology, the focus will be on selling licenses to companies with the financial resources to make it a success. According to the company, several interested market parties have already presented themselves.