Green Materials: Ineos/Indaver to recycle PS in Europe

Styrenics maker Ineos Styrolution is collaborating with Indaver nv, a European waste management company with large-scale treatment facilities in the port of Antwerp headquartered in Belgium, for chemical recycling of polystyrene (PS) in Europe.

The collaboration between the two companies aims at taking advantage of the recyclability of PS to convert post-consumer waste in to valuable resources. It will benefit from Indaver’s intense testing of their depolymerisation and purification process and Indaver’s plans to set up Plastics2Chemicals, a demo-installation in the port of Antwerp, with a recycling capacity of 15,000 tonnes/year being operational in the first half of 2021.

Indaver says it has a strong track record providing strong solutions to the chemical industry. The close vicinity of Indaver to the Ineos Styrolution site in Antwerp contributes to close collaboration.

The initial focus of the collaboration will be to fully align the output of Indaver’s depolymerisation process with feedstock specifications of Ineos’s polymerisation process.

“Waste is not an end product. It is a phase in the lifecycle of a material. With the innovative Plastics2Chemicals project, Indaver develops a sustainable solution for plastic waste by recycling into high-grade materials. We are pleased to work with Ineos Styrolution as one of our preferred partners to use these recycled materials as a valuable alternative for virgin raw materials. This project is an example of the industry’s sustained commitment to help achieve the European objectives in valorizing plastics.” says Paul De Bruycker, CEO Indaver.