Equipolymers is to build an industrial scale plant in Italy that will perform chemical recycling of PET resin. The Dow-owned company plans to build the 10,000 tpa plant in Sardinia next year.

The work has grown out of a project begun by Corepla, the Italian consortium that collects, recovers and recycles plastics packaging in Italy. Other partners include M&G, Clariant, Tecnimont and Ecosol. “This plant would be the first demonstration plant in Europe for this technology,” said Cesare Spreafico, director general of Corepla.

The technology takes PET resin from drinks bottles and converts them back into the feedstock PTA (purified terephthalic acid). This is then combined with virgin PTA to produce PET again.