gr3n teams up with Intecsa to build first-of-a-kind plant for PET recycling

gr3n’s process has the potential to change the way PET is recycled worldwide, enabling huge benefits for both the recycling industry and the entire polyester value chain. Many efforts have been made in the past to transfer enhanced recycling from research laboratories to the manufacturing industry, but the economics and skepticism of the first adopters have constantly blocked the progress of the proposed solutions.

Thanks to the MADE technology developed by gr3n, this approach is now feasible and makes gr3n one of the few companies with the potential to provide a reliable enhanced recycling solution that closes the life cycle of PET, and also offers food grade polymer material, processes a large variety of waste and reduces the carbon footprint of these materials usually destined for incineration or landfill. The gr3n process is economically sustainable and industrially viable as it breaks down any type of PET and polyester plastic into its two core components (PTA and MEG monomers), which can then be re-assembled to obtain virgin-like plastics allowing endless recycling loops.

The world’s first industrial-scale MADE PET recycling plant, aiming to be operational in 2027, will have the capability to process post-industrial and post-consumer PET waste including hard-to-recycle waste, to produce approximately 40.000 tons of virgin PET chips from the recycled monomers saving nearly 2 million tons of CO2 during its operating life. The post-consumer and/or post-industrial polyesters will be both from bottles (colored, colorless, transparent, opaque) and textiles (100% polyester but also mixtures of other materials like PU, cotton, polyether, polyurea, etc. with up to 30% of presence in the raw textile).

“This is a huge step for gr3n, as it will allow us to grow even more, showing enhanced recycling is something tangible and that it is possible to bring MADE, our Microwave Assisted Depolymerization, to market,” said Maurizio Crippa, gr3n Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Shareholders have the full view on gr3n’s operations, so moving forward with one of them is further confirmation of their trust but also of the strength of the data and the results generated”.

“gr3n has the potential to change the recycling industry, as their technology allows us to tackle things other technologies cannot,” said Ramiro Prieto, Commercial and New Business Units Director at Intecsa Industrial. “This means expanding the raw material that can be recycled, then accelerating the transition to the circular economy. As Industrial partner and shareholder, we are part of the board but we have also had the opportunity to perform the basic engineering of the industrial plant, thus we are well acquainted with the technology which we firmly believe is now ready to level up”.

Intecsa Industrial is an international company that was born in 1965 as the industrial engineering arm of the largest construction group in Spain and early afterward provided full integral solutions for Engineering, Procurement & Construction of projects worldwide.

(Press release / SK)