First commercially available chemically recycled food-grade R-PP pellets enter market

LONDON (ICIS)–SABIC has entered into an agreement with biaxially oriented PP (BOPP) film producer IRPLAST to supply it with food-grade bio-based PP and chemically recycled food-grade recycled polypropylene (R-PP) from mixed-plastic waste, it announced on Thursday.

Last week, Tesco began trialling food-grade recycled polypropylene (R-PP), produced via pyrolysis, in cheese packaging in some of its UK stores.

Both developments are significant because they represent the first known commercial availability of food-grade chemically recycled R-PP, and the first food-grade R-PP from post-consumer waste.

Currently, mechanical recycling cannot produce food-grade R-PP from post-consumer waste in Europe because of the European Food Safety Authority’s 95% rule which decrees that mechanically recycled food-grade material must be sourced from at least 95% waste from food-contact applications.

As a result, many players do not expect industrial scale food-grade recycled polyolefins (R-PO) to be available until chemical recycling reaches maturity. There is some food-grade mechanically recycled  PP currently available from post-industrial secondary packaging sources from the meat and agriculture sector, but volumes remain minimal and there is a limited ability to scale up.

Tesco’s R-PP will be sourced from post-consumer soft plastic packaging waste collected in store, and transformed in to TACOIL – a depolymerised crude oil – by Plastic Energy using pyrolysis. The TACOIL will then be converted by SABIC into a chemically recycled PP.

Volumes for either project could not be immediately confirmed.

There have been concerns in the R-PP market that the increasing number of chemical recycling plants coming onstream could tighten post-consumer waste supply. This is because the majority of chemical recycling processes rely on some form of sorting and separating.

Post-consumer waste bales commonly contain contaminants from materials such as wood, metal and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) that are incompatible with several chemical recycling processes.

This material has to be sorted and separated prior to processing, just as it would in mechanical recycling, except the high heat and pressures used make effective sorting even more critical.

Some processes also require limitations on moisture. Separating and sorting is a costly and highly-skilled process and remains one of the core challenges across all recycling processes.

Because of the costs and challenges of sorting and separating, most chemical recyclers do not target low-quality mixed plastic waste – as is used in the SABIC examples – but rather the same waste streams that are typically used in mechanical recycling.

There are even chemical recycling pilot plants that use reprocessed flake material to ensure that contamination is avoided.

Focus article by Mark Victory

ICIS publishes a weekly Europe recycled polypropylene (R-PP) price report covering post-consumer and post-industrial bales, flakes and pellets. To subscribe to the new report, or for further information, please contact clientsuccess@icis.com.