The German waste management company Interzero and the Austrian oil, gas and chemicals group OMV will jointly build a secondary sorting plant for mixed plastic packaging waste from households in Walldürn in the Southwest of Germany. The new joint venture, Circular Feedstock Walldürn GmbH, is sort up to 260,000 tonnes of plastic-containing waste a year in the new plant to extract feedstock for chemical recycling. The input material will originate from separate household collections via Germany's yellow bags and bin system. Alba Recycling holds a 10.1 per cent share in the company, OMV 89.9 per cent. OMV put its investment volume for the new facility at more than €170m. The two companies had entered exclusive talks about the project last year.
Interzero says it operates five sorting plants for lightweight packaging waste in Germany with a combined capacity of 800,000 tonnes, accounting for about a third of the country's total collection volume of plastic and metal packaging and beverage cartons from households. The sorting residues from these facilities contain many mixed plastics which cannot be recycled mechanically or only with great difficulty using current technology and which are therefore incinerated at present. Interzero will have the residual mixed plastics from its five sorting plants re-sorted in the new Walldürn facility, which is to start operating in 2026. According to OMV, a total of around 120 new jobs will be created at the site. The groundbreaking ceremony is to take place on 20 November.
Mixed plastics to undergo pyrolysis at OMV's Schwechat site
OMV is currently building a demonstration plant for its proprietary "ReOil" chemical recycling process for plastic waste at its refinery site in Schwechat near Vienna, Austria. The plant will be designed to process 16,000 tonnes of waste plastics a year. The pyrolysis oil produced b y OMV in the facility is to be used by the group's subsidiary Borealis to produce feedstocks for the production of primary plastics.
Read more about the joint project in Walldürn here ...
