Neste to invest in liquefied waste plastic upgrading unit at its Porvoo refinery

Neste's complex refinery in Porvoo. Source: Neste

Neste has made the final investment decision to commence construction of upgrading facilities for liquefied plastic waste at its Porvoo refinery in Finland. With the investment of 111 million euros, Neste will build the capacity to upgrade 150,000 tons of liquefied waste plastic per year. Upgrading is one of the three processing steps turning liquefied waste plastic into high-quality feedstock for new plastics: pretreatment, upgrading and refining. The investment is part of a broader project (PULSE = Pretreatment and Upgrading of Liquefied waste plastic to Scale up circular Economy), which has received an EU Innovation Fund grant of 135 million euros if fully implemented and is targeting a total capacity of 400,000 tons per year.

Pretreatment and upgrading of liquefied waste plastic play an important role in Neste’s approach to chemical recycling. They allow the company to increase flexibility for processing lower-quality plastic waste and scale up processing the liquefied waste plastic into high-quality petrochemical feedstock in its existing refinery in Porvoo.

“We have developed our capability to process circular raw material at the Porvoo refinery over the recent years and are now set to build a respective facility. The new facility processing 150,000 tons of liquefied waste plastic, is planned to be finalized in the first half of 2025,” states Markku Korvenranta, Executive Vice President in Neste’s Oil Products.

The project will see Neste building new assets at the Porvoo refinery, but also leveraging existing assets through retrofitting, to scale-up chemical recycling fast and efficiently. The upgraded liquefied waste plastic will then be processed in the conventional refinery in which it will replace a portion of the fossil resources processed at the Porvoo refinery.

Required preparation works at the Porvoo refinery were successfully completed during the first half of 2023, enabling the construction work to commence without any delay.