Dow has announced it has invested in Xycle, a Rotterdam-based chemical recycler.
The investment, which also includes capital from ING, Invest-NL, Polestar Capital and Vopak, will support the construction of Xycle's first commercial-scale pyrolysis plant, located in the port of Rotterdam.
The facility is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2026, with a projected plastic waste processing capacity of 21,000 annually.
Dow will offtake the feedstock produced and will use it to manufacture new circular plastics, which the US-based chemicals company said in a statement are in ‘high demand from global customers and brands’.
Xycle started building the plant in November 2024 using a modular layout, allowing production to scale up or down depending on demand. It currently expects 10 pyrolysis reactors to be delivered in the third quarter of 2025 and installed before the end of the year.
Going forward, Xycle plans to develop more chemical recycling facilities globally, using larger reactor sizes to increase single plant capacity to 100,000/year, Dow said in a statement.
“We are thrilled to announce this strategic investment in Xycle which marks another pivotal step towards our goal to transform the waste,” commented Stephanie Kalil, commercial vice president, Dow Packaging & Speciality Plastics EMEA. “The performance and efficiency of Xycle’s technology strongly complements our increasingly diverse global portfolio of recycling solutions. We believe that the robust financial backing and credibility of our consortium partners demonstrates the strength of the opportunity at hand to scale advanced recycling technologies; to address the plastic waste challenge and meet growing customer demand for circular products.”
Xycle started developing its pyrolysis technology in 2008, as part of Teknow, a Dutch-Indo engineering company. Several small projects using the technology have been commissioned in India since 2012. The company commissioned a testing facility in Moerdijk, the Netherlands in 2018, where it has tested over 35 different polymer waste streams.
“Dow’s investment – alongside our other partners - in Xycle’s first commercial facility marks a significant step in developing and expanding our innovative pyrolysis-based technology, which has been shown to deliver best-in-class yield for cracker feedstock,” said Arnd Thomas, CEO at Xycle Holding. “Working closely with Dow will ensure we can leverage their expertise in developing high-quality circular materials, enabling us to scale our unique technology and accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastics.”
In 2022, Dow partnered with Mura Technology to build a 20,000 chemical recycling plant based on Mura’s supercritical water technology at Dow’s Central Germany site in Böhlen, near Leipzig. Commissioning is expected for 2025, but there have been no official projects updates since 2022.
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