Mexico City — BASF SE is stepping up its support for chemical recycling in Mexico by backing a new pyrolysis plant in one of the country's most industrialized states.
The plant, close to Lerma, a municipality 30 miles west of Mexico City, will be the first of its kind in the State of Mexico when it opens later this year, BASF representative Fernando Pérez Vaz said at the five-day Plastimagen Light virtual trade show and conference in March.
Pérez added that the plant's owner, a business partner of BASF Mexicana, is investing $1.5 million to $2 million in the project.
"BASF does not have pyrolysis plants," Pérez, BASF Mexicana's head of strategic business development, said. "We do have several commercial partners in Europe and North America."
He failed to mention the name of the company behind the Mexican plant during a conference on chemical recycling at Plastimagen Light, in which he described the workings of BASF's ChemCycling project, launched in late 2018.
Panel moderator Rubén Saldivar Guerrero, of the government-funded Centro de Investigación en Química Aplicada (Ciqa), emphasized the importance of recycling by stating that global plastics production totals 300 million metric tons a year.
"Only 18 percent of plastic waste is recycled and 8 million [metric] tons of plastic waste ends up in the sea every year," he said.
The two other panelists were Rodolfo Flores, also of Ciqa, and Mario Sánchez Tellez of BASF Mexicana.
'Only 18 percent of plastic waste is recycled and 8 million [metric] tons of plastic waste ends up in the sea every year.'
Rubén Saldivar Guerrero
Centro de Investigación en Química Aplicada