Austrian energy group OMV and Alba Recycling are planning to build a modern sorting plant for processing mixed plastics.

An innovative sorting plant for mixed plastics with a capacity of more than 200,000 tons per year will reportedly be built at Alba's Walldürn site. The plant, which OMV (Vienna) and Alba Recycling plan to build jointly, will supply suitable feedstock for chemical recycling and enable the production of virginlike polyolefins, is said. "Chemical recycling does not compete with mechanical recycling," emphasizes Dr. Axel Schweitzer, owner of Alba Recycling. "However, it is the only option for mixed and multilayer plastics." OMV and Alba Recycling reportedly plan to turn mixed plastic waste, which is currently incinerated, into an important source of raw material to produce recycled material for the production of goods and packaging. The sorting process developed by Alba Recycling had already been tested on an industrial scale and the product has been successfully processed at OMV's Re-Oil pilot plant, is said. Together with subsidiary Borealis, OMV has been operating the Re-Oil pilot plant at the Schwechat refinery in Austria since 2018, which can reportedly process 100 kilograms of waste plastics into 100 liters of synthetic feedstock per hour. An expanded demonstration plant with a capacity of 16,000 metric tons per year is scheduled to come on stream in 2023. Construction of a commercial-scale plant by 2026 is planned.

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