At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Sabic announced a new target for the production of its Trucircle portfolio of chemically recycled materials.
At a reception hosted by the company, it said its goal was to reach production of 1 million metric tons of circular materials by the year 2030. Once the commercial advanced recycling unit Sabic is currently constructing — its first — in Geleen, Netherlands, has been completed, hitting the target will become more feasible.
Commercial delivery of the first circular polymers from the unit is expected in 2023.
As an added boost, Sabic also revealed that it is exploring a new world-scale commercial advanced recycling investment. This new plant would potentially have a capacity of around 200 kilotonnes of circular materials per year.
The company also mentioned it was looking at other projects, such as a small-scale chemical recycling plant in Saudi Arabia.
Sabic officials said they are committed to ensuring that its customers have access to sustainable alternatives to conventional materials, said its CEO, Abdulrahman Al-Fageeh. “Our target of one million metric tons of Trucircle solutions by 2030 intends to help usher in the new circular economy.”
In 2019, when Sabic unveiled plans at Davos to build a world-first small-scale commercial unit to produce certified circular polymers from the advanced recycling of used plastics, the idea was still relatively new.
Until the new facility comes on stream, the company has been using existing facilities to produce smaller volumes of Trucircle materials for brand owners and customers for a variety of applications already available in the market.
Its certified circular polypropylene has been used in ice cream tubs from Unilever’s premium ice cream brand, Magnum, since 2020 — the first brand to use recycled plastic in the ice cream industry. Sabic has also partnered with Mars and Landbell on a recycling project designed to close the loop on the wrapper used to package the Kind snack bar.
Sabic’s certified circular and certified renewable products are verified and authenticated in a mass balancing approach under the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) Plus scheme.