Neste chemical recycling plant is ready to scale up

Neste Corp. has commissioned a new upgrading facility for liquefied waste plastic (LWP) at its Porvoo refinery in Finland, advancing the scaling of chemical recycling. The €111 million investment enables annual processing of up to 150,000 tons of liquefied plastic scrap, making it the world’s largest LWP upgrading facility. Production ramp-up will be gradual.

The upgrading unit is designed to process oils derived from challenging plastic streams, including multi-layer packaging, mixed plastic scrap and contaminated plastics. In the process, LWP is handled together with crude oil and attributed to the Neste RE product line using a mass balance approach.

Neste has been processing liquefied waste plastic since 2020. Construction of the upgrading facility and its integration with the existing oil refinery began in 2023 and was completed at the end of last year. Production ramp-up has started and will proceed gradually depending on market and regulatory developments.

Neste notes that while mechanical recycling remains essential, it is often limited by the quality of discarded materials. The new facility is designed to enable the scale-up of chemical recycling by upgrading liquefied plastic waste to meet feedstock quality requirements for high-quality plastics manufacturers.

Maiju Helin, director of polymers and chemicals at Neste, says the current European Commission recycled-content calculation rules for the Single Use Plastics Directive threaten the ability to meet EU targets. She called for amendments to include refineries under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation to maintain Europe’s competitiveness.

Jori Sahlsten, executive vice president of oil products at Neste, stated that the commissioning demonstrates industrial-scale processing of liquefied waste plastic and the company’s ability to develop advanced technology, set safety standards and create new supply chains for challenging raw materials. He thanked partners and employees for turning the vision into reality.

In the upgrading facility, LWP is processed together with crude oil, with a mass balance approach used to attribute recycled inputs to the Neste RE product line.

Neste has partnered with Alterra and Technip Energies to license liquefaction technology for the chemical recycling of difficult-to-recycle plastics.