Plastics recycler PureCycle Technologies Inc. is laying off 22 employees, or about 12 percent of its workforce, and has parted ways with its chief financial officer.
The Orlando, Fla.-based company told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Dec. 1 filing that it had eliminated 22 jobs as part of a "zero based budgeting process" aimed at boosting its performance.
The company said about 160 employees remain after the layoffs, which it said do not signal a change in strategic direction as it tries to move toward commercialization.
Most of the employees let go are "not associated" with its Ironton, Ohio, manufacturing facility, it said.
PureCycle also said in a Dec. 1 announcement that CFO Larry Somma, who joined the company in November 2021, resigned to "pursue other opportunities" and was given a cash payout of $300,000.
The company said one of its board members, Jeff Fieler, will serve as interim CFO while it searches for a replacement.
PureCycle, which uses a solvent-based process to clean and recycle waste polypropylene, declared force majeure in August following production problems in Ironton and said at the time that it may not be able to meet multimillion pound production requirements called for in financing agreements to build the plant.
But it said in announcing its quarterly earnings in November that it reached an agreement in principle with bondholders to extend milestone completion agreements by three months in exchange for $50 million cash collateral.
At the time, the company said it was working through challenges getting its first-of-a-kind manufacturing facility running on a continuous basis, since it first produced pellets in June.
It licenses purification technology originally developed by Procter & Gamble Co.
It also said in the November SEC filing that it has not generated any revenue yet but anticipates doing so with the commercialization of the Ironton plant, which cost about $361 million and is designed to produce 107 million pounds of recycled PP annually when fully functional.
It said it would spend about $1 million in severance costs with the layoffs.