Chemical recycler Ioniqa has filed for bankruptcy protection.
The spinoff from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands said in a statement that ‘achieving a positive cash flow from its advanced polyester recycling technology will take too long’.
Ioniqa 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. 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, ten months in, Ioniqa said large-scale deployment of its PET depolymerisation technology has proven ‘economically unfeasible’ under current market conditions and the company’s current set-up.
It cited low cost of virgin plastics, a plastics recycling chain still in development, and too-far-out-into-the future implementation of recycling quotas mandates as factors for its poor financial position.
In a recent interview with Sustainable Plastics, Ioniqa said it didn’t plan to expand its recycling capacity at its demonstration plant, but rather to focus on licencing its Denua TM technology. Ioniqa’s strategic licencing partner is Koch Technology Solutions, a UK-based a technology licensing business with roots in DuPont. The partners expected to sell licences will on an estimated 50,000-plus tonnes scale.
The company’s Denua TM technology is a proprietary glycolysis process that depolymerises all types and colours of PET waste into its original monomers. Its feedstock is mostly based on low-end PET.
“What we offer is technology that enables companies to recycle 100% of their PET into monomers, without compromises on quality, without compromises on capacity,” Ioniqa business developer Maarten Stolk told Sustainable Plastics back in May. “What we’ve seen so far is that we can be a cost attractive solution, which I think is essential. Everybody wants the sustainability of recycling, but it needs to happen at an acceptable price.”
Ioniqa joins Umincorp, another Dutch plastics recycler, in declaring bankruptcy. A year ago, Plastics Recyclers Europe raised alarm bells about the economic conditions of recyclers, calling for urgent measures to avoid a shutdown of recycling plants across Europe.
Falling recyclate prices, high energy prices, rising inflation, and a tight macroeconomic situation across the globe have had dire effects on the European recycling industry.