Recycling technologies
Transforming end-of-life plastic into circular solutions
Plastics are essential to modern life, keeping our food fresh, our vehicles light, and our medicines sterile. However, most plastics currently follow a linear lifecycle, in which they are produced, often used once, and then discarded—typically ending up in landfills or incinerated. A circular economy addresses this by keeping materials in use longer and reducing waste and emissions through the principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle.
While most recycling today is mechanical, chemical recycling is an essential complement that offers several unique advantages:
- It can handle hard-to-recycle plastics that can’t currently be mechanically recycled, diverting them from landfill or incineration, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to incineration.
- Plastic can be recycled indefinitely without a reduction in quality.
- It produces feedstock that can be transformed into polymers of virgin quality, indistinguishable from those made from fossil-based sources. This makes it suitable for highly demanding applications, including food contact materials, healthcare products, electric vehicles, and photovoltaics.
These benefits make chemical recycling an important part of building a circular economy and help stakeholders across the value chain meet their sustainability goals.
ReOil®
ReOil® is our proprietary chemical recycling technology that converts end-of-life plastics into circular feedstock for the production of chemicals, in particular new plastics. We operate ReOil® at our Schwechat refinery in Vienna and are continuously investing in advancing this technology to ensure a reliable supply of circular feedstock for the market.
ReOil® is part of our sustainable base chemicals portfolio, designed to support our industry’s shift toward circular feedstocks.
How does the ReOil® process work?
The process begins with pyrolysis, where plastics are heated in an inert environment to 400-450°C, producing pyrolysis oil. This oil can then be processed into a base chemical that replaces fossil hydrocarbons as feedstock in the production of new plastics.
What makes ReOil® special?
We have gathered more than 15 years of operational experience on ReOil® thanks to rigorous testing and piloting. Between 2018 and November 2024, we have achieved over 29,000 cracking hours at our pilot plant in Schwechat. ReOil® is one of the most advanced and scalable chemical recycling solutions on the market. Designed for industrial scale, it can support the highest capacity single-train plants on the market.
ReOil® in action
The ReOil® pilot plant has been operating at our Schwechat refinery since 2018, accumulating extensive operational experience. We have started operations at our new ReOil® plant, which has a planned capacity of 16,000 metric tons of plastic waste per year.
Sustainability, assured
Our ReOil® plants are ISCC PLUS certified, which ensures that the circular content is verifiably tracked and traced throughout the supply chain. This approach allows for accurate accounting of materials at every stage of the production process, providing a clear and credible way to attribute recycled content.
Europe’s largest waste sorting facility
We’re working with Interzero on building a state-of-the-art sorting facility in Walldürn, Germany. This facility will provide steady volumes of end-of-life plastic waste for our ReOil® plants, supporting a stable supply of circular feedstock for our customers and creating new jobs across the value chain.