Landbell, Sabic sign long-term cooperation agreement

German waste management service provider Landbell and Saudi chemical giant Sabic have signed a long-term cooperation agreement under which the companies will collaborate on putting in place more closed-loop systems for plastic packaging and on scaling up advanced recycling. 
The focus will be on establishing and further developing processes to increase the feedstock streams, technology and know-how needed for larger-scale chemical recycling operations.
The agreement is a further reinforcement of the partnership between the companies, who first joined forces back in 2020, and builds on the success of the pioneering recycling project that Landbell and Sabic announced  in 2022 with Mars, aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of closing the loop on flexible packaging. At that time, mixed-used plastic was collected by Landbell and used to produce certified circular polypropylene (PP) as part of Sabic’s Trucircle portfolio.
Landbell and Sabic are hoping to persuade other brand owners - as well as plastic and packaging converters - to incorporate circular solutions from chemically recycled post-consumer plastic packaging into their product applications. Once a downstream value chain partner is also involved in this new model, the collaboration aims to show that closed-loop projects have the potential to capture the value and bring back used plastic into new material streams. To that end, Landbell is supplying mixed plastic packaging waste from the German yellow bag collection as feedstock for chemical recycling- waste that historically has been sent for low-end mechanical recycling or incineration for energy recovery.
The waste is taken to the specialised pre-treatment plant, operated by A. Siemer Entsorgung, where it undergoes further sorting and cleaning processes in preparation for further processing. From there, it will be delivered to the Sabic Plastic Energy Advanced Recycling Unit in Geleen (currently in the final stages of construction) where it will be converted into a pyrolysis oil called Tacoil, that after treatment in a newly built Sabic hydrotreater plant, Sabic can use in its production process.