Loop and Suez Choose France for PET Recycling Plant
Canadian clean technology company Loop Industries and French partner Suez have secured exclusive rights until June 2022 to buy a parcel of land in Port-Jerome-sur-Seine in northern France to build their first chemical recycling plant for PET.
The companies are paying about €1.3 million for the site, which is strategically located for transporting waste plastic feedstock along the River Seine from Paris, as well as being well positioned to service large French consumer packaged goods brands such as Danone, L’Oréal and L’Occitane. Total investment is expected to be €250 million, and the project is expected to create 180 full-time manufacturing and engineering jobs.
Loop and Suez said they chose Port-Jerome-sur-Seine after an extensive review of several dozen potential sites across Europe, citing the Normandy region as offering a skilled labor pool, favorable logistics and a supportive regional government.
In September 2020, the companies announced they were partnering to built Europe’s first Infinite Loop plant that will convert waste PET into virgin-quality, food-grade PET via depolymerization.
Construction of the facility, which will have a capacity of 70,000 t/y of recycled PET, is scheduled to start in 2023 with commissioning about 18 months later. The next steps will include permitting, finalizing customer offtake agreements, and financing – including support from the French government.
Loop said that at full capacity, the plant is expected to save more than 255,000 t/y of CO2 compared with producing virgin PET resin from fossil fuels.
Last June, Loop announced that South Korea’s SK Global Chemical had agreed to take a 10% in the company to accelerate commercialization of its recycling technology. Loop and SK plan to build at least four plants by 2030, the first of which will be located in Ulsan, South Korea.
SK’s equity investment of $56.5 million – which makes it Loop’s second-largest shareholder – is planned to be applied toward funding Loop’s flagship recycling plant in Becancour, Quebec, where site preparation work began last November.
Author: Elaine Burridge, Freelance Journalist
