Extrusion International 3-2023

16 Extrusion International 3/2023 INDUSTRY NEWS www.smart-extrusion.com Significant Feedstock Agreements for Molecular Recycling Facility in France Secured  Eastman announced it has se- cured a significant amount of feed - stock needed for its planned molec- ular recycling facility in Port Jerome sur Seine, Normandy, France. With an investment of $1 billion, the planned facility will become the world's largest material-to-material molecular recycling plant. "We began the year with roughly half of our feedstock needs secured for phase 1 of the project, and with these important additional agree- ments in place we are moving clos- er to the more than 80 percent we expect to secure by year-end," said Brad Lich, executive vice president and chief commercial officer. "This strong progress is a testament to the complementary nature of East- man's innovative molecular recy- cling technology to the current me- chanical technologies in the market and to the growing need to enable circularity for more waste streams going back to high-quality contact- sensitive output." Citeo, the leading Producer Re- sponsible Organization (PRO) in France, recently announced that Eastman, in a commercial partner- ship with Paprec, France's leading integrated waste management company, has been selected to re- ceive a significant amount of feed - stock for the methanolysis facility in Normandy. The Citeo agreement to secure French household waste has provided Eastman with a strong foundation for securing French- sourced waste for its project in France. Eastman also shared it has reached an additional agreement with Interzero, an innovation leader in plastics recycling with the largest sorting capacity in Europe, for an additional 25,000 metric tonnes of waste in addition to the 20,000 met- ric tonnes from a previous agree- ment announced last year. Another agreement with a lead- ing company in the waste manage- ment and recycling eco-system was reached at the end of last year. This agreement, adding approximately 30,000 metric tonnes of waste, al- lows geographic coverage in strate- gic waste supplies. Eastman recently shared the deci- sion to build the facility in two phas- es which will allow the facility to recycle over 200,000 metric tonnes of hard-to-recycle polyester waste annually, most of which is currently landfilled or incinerated today. Due to the updated plans, the company now expects phase 1 of the project to be mechanically complete in 2026 and process 100,000 metric tonnes. Eastman will use its proven Poly- ester Renewal Technology (PRT) in France to recycle hard-to-recycle plastic waste that remains in a lin- ear economy today. The company's recycling technology allows this hard-to-recycle waste to be broken down into its molecular building blocks and then reassembled to be- come like new material without any compromise in quality and perfor- mance. Eastman's PRT enables the potentially infinite value of materi - als by keeping them in production, lifecycle after lifecycle. With the technology's highly efficient yield and the renewable energy sources available at the Normandy location, Eastman can transform waste plas- tic into like new food contact poly- esters with lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional methods. In addition to this announced plant in France, Eastman is invest- ing in two other molecular recycling plants in the U.S. - Kingsport, Ten- nessee, and another U.S site to be announced later this year with an expected combined global invest- ment of approximately $2.25 billion for all three facilities. Eastman www.eastman.com