Seeking to secure the supply of feedstock for their chemical and mechanical recycling businesses, OMV and Borealis have entered into long-term supply agreements with Tomra, the companies announced.
Under the terms of these agreements, Tomra Feedstock will ensure a consistent and stable supply of high-quality raw materials for OMV Group's recycling operations. OMV will process feedstock supplied by Tomra Feedstock at its ReOil facilities in Austria using its proprietary, patented, chemical recycling technology, which converts end-of-life plastic waste into pyrolysis oil; Borealis will process the feedstock produced by Tomra at its various mechanical recycling facilities in Europe based on Borealis’ Borcycle M technology.
This technology converts polyolefin-based post-consumer waste into high-performance polymers suitable for demanding applications in industries including automotive, energy, infrastructure, healthcare, appliances and consumer products.
“This agreement is another tangible step forward on Borealis’ commitment to increasing the share of recycled content across a wide range of high-performance products,” said Craig Arnold, Borealis executive vice president Polyolefins, Circular Economy Solutions and Innovation & Technology.
Tomra is a leading manufacturer of sensor-based sorting systems for metal and waste recycling and is currently building a first-of-its-kind sorting facility building a sorting plant in Germany. The feedstock it supplies will be produced from mixed post-consumer plastic material which would otherwise lost to landfill and or incinerated at the end of life. at currently being developed by Tomra in Germany. This facility, with an input capacity of 80,000 tonnes per annum, will go into operation at the end of 2025. Tomra Feedstock’s process transforms pre-sorted mixed post-consumer plastic waste into clean fractions of specific polymer types. These fractions can then be further processed in mechanical and chemical recycling plants such as those run by OMV and Borealis.
“With our technology, we have the ability to recover post-consumer plastics that would have otherwise been lost to incineration,” said Volker Rehrmann, executive vice president and head of Tomra Recycling.
“In this way, we are making a significant contribution to the creation of a circular economy for plastics,” added Daniela Vlad, OMV executive vice president Chemicals & Materials.
The agreement will provide feedstock for OMV’s ReOil pilot plant in Schwechat, Austria, and the company is currently constructing a new 16,000 t/a ReOil plant at the same site. Like the existing pilot plant, the new plant will be ISCC PLUS certified.