Finland's Neste Group is to receive an EU grant of €135m supporting its chemical recycling activities for waste plastics. The company said on Wednesday that it would receive an EU Innovation Fund grant to help finance the chemical recycling project it is developing at its refinery in Porvoo, Finland.
With its Pulse project ("Pretreatment and Upgrading of Liquefied Waste Plastic to Scalable Up Circular Economy") Neste aims to use proprietary technology to pre-treat and upgrade liquefied waste plastic and integrate the technologies into the refinery operations. The goal is to reach a pre-treatment and upgrading capacity of 400,000 tonnes per year. This would bring Neste significantly closer to its long-term goal of processing more than one million tonnes of plastic waste per year by 2030.
In March of this year, the company announced that it was carrying out a feasibility study for the project. A final investment decision was expected in 2023 and phased implementation schedule to begin in 2024, Neste said.
According to the petroleum company, the Pulse project plays an important role in commercializing chemical recycling of waste plastic as it allows scaling up chemical recycling and bridging the quality gap between unprocessed liquefied waste plastic and the petrochemical industry’s raw material requirements.
“We are excited to be among the projects selected by the EU Innovation Fund,” said Mercedes Alonso, Executive Vice President Neste Renewable Polymers and Chemicals. “While showing recognition for and faith in our work on chemical recycling, the funding also highlights the importance of the approach itself. If we want to move towards a circular economy for polymers and chemicals, chemical recycling will have a major role to play."
