Eastman secures ‘strategic waste supplies’ for molecular recycling plant

Eastman has secured a significant amount of feedstock needed for its planned molecular recycling facility in Port Jerome sur Seine, Normandy, France. With an investment of US$ 1 billion (EUR 914 million), the planned facility will become ‘the world’s largest material-to-material molecular recycling plant’.

Eastman is building the facility in two phases which will allow the site to recycle over 200 000 tonnes of hard-to-recycle polyester waste annually. The new site will also process coloured and opaque PET waste that is commonly landfilled or incinerated.

The company expects to complete phase 1 of the project in 2026, reaching a processing capacity of 100 000 tonnes. Eastman initially targeted a final capacity of 160 000 tonnes. It was able to scale up plans by securing strategic waste supplies in a larger geographic area.

‘We began the year with roughly half of our feedstock needs secured for phase 1 of the project, and with these important additional agreements in place we are moving closer to the more than 80% we expect to secure by year-end,’ says Brad Lich, Eastman’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer.

The methanolysis facility is being realised with the support of producer responsibility organisation Citeo, recycling firm Paprec as well as Interzero. The latter is providing 25 000 tonnes of plastic scrap on top of the 20 000 metric tonnes announced last year.

‘We’re pleased to grow our initial agreement with Eastman and do even more to solve the waste crisis we’re facing,’ says Jacco de Haas, chief commercial officer of Interzero Plastics Recycling. ‘Chemical recycling is a necessary complement to mechanical recycling to keep more raw materials in the loop.’