Europe leads in installed chemical recycling plants, says Nova Institute

The 2023 edition of the Advanced Recycling Conference kicked off this morning, with around 280 attendees making their way to Cologne in Germany or joining online.

The first conference session, ‘Policy, Markets, and Strategy’, allowed a sneak peek into Nova Institute’s update on its mapping of chemical recycling, due to be published in January 2024. The report, which builds on the 2022 edition, adds 30 company and technology profiles and offers worldwide statists of chemical recycling plants, including input and output capacities.

These statistics show that Europe is leading the race on installed facilities, counting 66 plants out of 228 installed globally. Germany and the Netherlands take the top spot, with eight plants each, followed by the UK with seven, and six in Spain. Nova Institute identified 80 companies using pyrolysis technology in Europe, with a maximum capacity of 90,000 tonnes a year and an average of 40,000 t/a. Solvolysis followed with around 25 companies, with a maximum capacity of around 25,000 t/and an average of 10,000 t/a; gasification with around 12 companies with a maximum capacity of 12,000 t/a; and dissolution with 10 companies with a maximum capacity of 10,000 t/a.

In terms of waste input capacity, Europe has a fourth of global capacity at 358 kilo tonnes a year, with the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain taking in the most waste. The vast majority of the waste is processed via pyrolysis technology (275 kt/a), followed by solvolysis (69 kt/a), dissolution (13 kt/a), enzymolysis (1kt/a), and gasification (0.1 kt/a).

Lars Krause, senior expert at Nova Institute, shared that Europe’s output capacity is 271 kt/a, translating to around 25% losses during the recycling process. Of the total output, 41% is destined to production of new plastics and polymers, according to the German research institute, with monomers from depolymerisation accounting for 66 kt/a, naphtha from pyrolysis for 36 kt/a, and polymers from dissolution for 11 kt/a. The remaining 35% of output products are SVC (pyrolysis oil, carbon black, wax, amongst others) and 24% fuels and energy.

The Nova Institute predicts that Europe’s chemical recycling output capacity needs to be extended to around 600 kt/a to satisfy the demand for 3,000 kt of recyclate for packaging in contact sensitive applications by 2030.  For that to happen, a clear political framework is needed, as are additional measures, argued Nicolas Hark, senior specialist policy & strategy at Nova Institute.

Whilst persistent feedback has led to chemical recycling and mass balancing starting to be considered in reports such as the Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD), in particular in a draft decision from May 2023, there are still issues to be addressed, said Hark. The draft report on End-of-Waste criteria for plastic recycling, for example, makes depolymerisation after pyrolysis or gasification mandatory for products to no longer be considered waste.

Sustainable Plastics has also been tracking the chemical recycling innovations and investments announced within the plastics industry since the 1950s. Subscribed users can access our chemical recycling tracker here.