Eastman achieves on-spec production at Kingsport molecular recycling facility

Eastman announced it has achieved on-spec initial production and is generating revenue from its new molecular recycling facility in Kingsport, Tennessee, said the company.

The company expects to ramp up production of the new facility over the coming months and enable growth across a wide range of markets. Achieving this critical milestone enables the company’s pathway to deliver approximately USD75 million of incremental EBITDA in 2024 from this facility as it builds momentum in its circular economy platform.

“We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of our Eastman team members who have worked tirelessly to build and bring this new facility online,” said Mark Costa, Board Chair and CEO. “By demonstrating molecular recycling at this scale, we have solidified our position as a leader in the creation of a circular economy. Demand for recycled material at virgin-quality levels from our new facility remains strong, and we are excited to announce this significant next milestone in our journey.”

Eastman’s proven polyester renewal technology recycles hard-to-recycle plastic waste bound for landfill or incineration today. The company’s technology allows this waste to be broken down into its molecular building blocks and then reassembled to become virgin-quality material without compromising performance. Eastman is enabling the potentially infinite use of materials by keeping these valuable molecules in production, in a material-to-material high-yield loop. Eastman can transform waste plastic into virgin quality food contact polyesters with lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional methods.

In addition to this recently completed facility in Kingsport, Eastman plans to invest in two additional molecular recycling plants, one in France and another U.S. site.

It was previously reported that Eastman Chemical Co. will invest USD1 billion in the construction of a plastic processing plant in France. Eastman's technology will make it possible to annually recycle up to 160 thousand tons of plastic waste that currently has to be burned. The equipment of the enterprise will allow the processing of plastic for the production, including new packaging. The plant is planned to be commissioned by 2025.

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Chemical leaders speaking in Houston at the World Petrochemical Conference by S&P Global said the industry has the tools and talent to solve the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and plastics pollution, but doing so will not be possible unless policymakers implement regulations that incentivize the massive investments required, said Chemweek.

The executives were careful to stress that regulations should provide clear targets and long-term certainty while leaving the precise path forward undefined.

“It’s a huge opportunity,” said Peter Vanacker, CEO of LyondellBasell. “We have never been in the business as industry players to produce granules. We’ve always been in the business to listen to our customers and provide solutions to our customers to fulfill their needs. So now, here, we have a huge journey ahead of us in a completely new world with its own supply and demand.”

Some of the technologies required have already been developed and operate at scale, but broad implementation is an economic problem.

“The good news is, technically, it’s a solvable challenge,” said Mark Costa, CEO of Eastman Chemical. He cited his company’s new 100,000 metric tons per year plant for the advanced recycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). “The challenge we have is how do you make this work on a more global scale and have the market structure to invest in. The opportunity here is significant, but it’s not going to be for free, right? There’s a price that has to be paid that’s a premium to a very well-established at-scale oil industry to build this kind of capability and be able to solve these problems. So you need a market structure that’s going to support this.”

Regulation is necessary to create the economic incentives that will drive the transition, the executives agreed.

“Policy is very critical,” said Karen McKee, president of ExxonMobil Product Solutions. “The most important things are clarity and certainty. You don’t really get certainty until you get into a rule making. And then you want durable policy, […] because we’re investing in projects with very long lives, and therefore just having confidence in the next two or three years of policy is oftentimes insufficient to drive an optimal answer.”

However, poorly formulated regulation can stifle rather than encourage innovation.

“I think good policy is typically technology agnostic — in other words, it is focused on solving the problem, and any solution that solves the problem should be incentivized and be brought to bear,” said McKee. “That’s very important. And I would also say that we need to be careful that we let the market work. Very often you do need some structured policy that incentivizes scale-up of new or nascent technologies. But in the end, you don’t want to create a world where subsidies are driving a solution set, because that’s not going to be sustainable in the long run.”

Vanacker agreed. “When I talk to regulators, I always try to remind them, what is the end target that you want to achieve? Could you please act as an enabler, so that we have that end target in front of us? As a European myself, we’re fully endorsing [the European Union’s] Fit for 55%, a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, and then net-zero by 2050. But the discussion also has to be on how do we enable that, and how do we encourage the entire value chain — it’s not just our industry, but all the other players in the value chain — to make sure that we can actually achieve those targets, instead of telling us what we cannot do.”

Ongoing negotiations toward a global plastics treaty suggest the message is getting through to policymakers. The negotiations were initiated with the aim of preventing pollution of the ocean with plastic waste. Discussions soon broadened to include proposed caps on plastics production, but the focus seems to have shifted back to the target of eliminating pollution.

“I think we’re getting a better hearing, and I think we’re getting better understood,” said McKee. “We have a lot more common ground with more governments and more [nongovernmental organizations], I think, than we had before. What I got as feedback initially was a lot of suspicion about the industry. When they engaged with us, and we were really demonstrating our firm desire to meet the ambition of the global plastics treaty to eliminate additional plastic waste leaking into the environment by 2040, I think, eventually, they realized we’re sincere. […] But I think the thing that has helped us more than anything is transparency. They’re really craving transparency.”

Dow CEO Jim Fitterling was optimistic that the negotiations will lead to a treaty that allows the chemical industry to fulfill its role as a solutions provider.

“There’s nobody in the industry that I work with or talk to that doesn’t want to tackle the plastic waste problem,” he noted, “but leakage of waste into the environment doesn’t have to be solved by limiting plastic production.” Plastics demand continues to grow because they significantly benefit quality of life. They have a low carbon footprint, they are recyclable, functional and, properly managed, sustainable, he added.

“I think some of the things that will be clearly on the table in Ottawa — where you have a tremendous amount of alignment from the industry, the converters, the brand owners, the retailers and countries — is we need things like designed-for-recyclability and -reuse standards. We need effective extended producer responsibility schemes, where the money goes back to creating the circular economy, which long-term has got to be there to eliminate the plastic pollution. We’re going to need probably recycled content mandates because that will create market demand and that will drive a change in behavior at a social level. We’re going to have to [increase] access to recycling. […] We need to have an all-of-the-above, technology-agnostic approach to mechanical recycling, advanced recycling, biofuels, bio-based raw materials, biodegradable products. We need to look at everything.”

We remind, circular plastics now account for 13.5% of the content in new plastic products manufactured in Europe, according to industry association Plastics Europe (Brussels). The association today published its biennial “The Circular Economy for Plastics: A European Analysis” report, which noted that the figure means the European plastics sector is more than halfway toward the interim ambition of Plastics Europe’s Plastics Transition roadmap to use 25% of plastics from circular sources in new products by 2030.

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The European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) said the European Commission’s recent communication, “Building the future with nature: Boosting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing in the EU,” could pave the way for an EU Biotechnology Act under the next European Commission mandate, said Chemweek.

This potential act should, however, address concerns around raw material availability and include all industries using these technologies, Cefic said.

“Cefic welcomes the communication’s acknowledgement of biotechnology and biomanufacturing’s potential to enhance Europe’s competitive edge and innovation landscape. The introduction of regulatory sandboxes represents a significant move towards a more adaptable and supportive regulatory framework, which is vital for the progression of biotech innovations,” it said.

The communication, however, overlooks a significant challenge about the availability of large quantities of feedstocks, like biomass for industrial use, which are crucial as primary raw materials for biotech-based processes, Cefic said.

In addition, the issue of higher raw material costs in Europe compared to other regions, such as Brazil or the US, poses a competitive disadvantage, and there is a crucial need to restore Europe’s competitiveness as outlined in the Antwerp Declaration for a European Industrial Deal, Cefic said.

Targeted market measures and compensation schemes to alleviate the cost pressures on European biotech firms are required to make them more competitive globally, Cefic said. These measures should encourage the use of European biomass, reducing our industry’s dependence on imports, it added.

“EU policies dealing with the bioeconomy must implement the ‘cascading use’ principle to ensure that biomass is used where it makes the most environmental, economic and social sense for circularity, value creation and jobs,” Cefic said.

Meanwhile, equally important is the need to extend support to a broad spectrum of organizations employing biotechnology, including startups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and multinational corporations, according to Cefic. “This reflects the technology’s widespread application and potential for innovation across the European economy,” it said.

We remind, circular plastics now account for 13.5% of the content in new plastic products manufactured in Europe, according to industry association Plastics Europe (Brussels). The association today published its biennial “The Circular Economy for Plastics: A European Analysis” report, which noted that the figure means the European plastics sector is more than halfway toward the interim ambition of Plastics Europe’s Plastics Transition roadmap to use 25% of plastics from circular sources in new products by 2030.

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Gazprom is sticking to its goal of achieving 100% of the technically possible level of network gasification by 2030, and is actively working with the regions via five-year programs, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom Oleg Aksyutin said in an article in the company's corporate magazine, said Interfax.

"It is expected that due to gasification and post-gasification alone, the increase in demand in the domestic market could reach nearly 20 bcm by 2030," the article says.

The long-term potential for growth in Gazprom's gas consumption due to the development of the gas motor fuel market, which has potential for both road, rail, sea and river transport, is estimated at 10 bcm.

In addition, the multi-component composition of Gazprom's resource base opens up opportunities for business diversification through the development of gas processing and the gas chemicals business.

Gazprom is implementing two new unique projects: the Amur Gas Processing Plant and a complex for processing ethane-containing gas near the village of Ust-Luga. The implementation of just two of these projects will triple Gazprom's gas processing volumes. Meanwhile, the total processing capacity of raw materials will exceed 150 bcm, Aksyutin said.

The company is guided by forecasts of growth in global gas demand, mainly due to Asian countries. "The demand for natural gas in the world will increase from 2022-2050 by more than one-third, which confirms the growing importance of this resource for the changing landscape of the global economy. The main center for gas demand will be the Asia-Pacific region, where consumption will almost double to over 1.6 trillion cubic meters in 2050, equivalent to the current consumption of North America and Europe combined. China will be the driver of gas demand growth in the Asia-Pacific region," the article says.

"Expected economic growth, combined with socio-demographic factors, will support an increase in energy demand of over 20% from 2022 through 2050 from 14.6 to 17.9 billion tonnes of oil equivalent. The structure of energy demand in the period under review will go through some significant changes. Shares of oil and coal will significantly decrease from 30% to 24% and from 26% to 13%, respectively. The share of renewable energy sources should increase to 17%, the forecast says. Gazprom believes it is important that natural gas take a leading position in the structure of the world fuel and energy balance by 2050, providing more than a quarter of the global need for energy sources," he said.

Gazprom also intends to create competitive domestic technologies in hydrogen energy. However, "the global transition to hydrogen energy is hampered by the lack of a global hydrogen market. Therefore, when developing hydrogen energy, it is important to assess all kinds of risks, observe the principle of technological neutrality, and proceed not from geopolitical preferences and popular trends, but from economic feasibility," Aksyutin said.

We remind, Gazprom Neft has opened a plant to recycle plastic packaging into secondary granules in Gatchina, Leningrad Region with annual capacity of 8,600 tonnes. The new plant will handle the complete cycle of recycling plastic packaging made of polypropylene and polyethylene into feedstock for subsequent use, the company said.

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Russia is increasing fuel production and eliminating logistics constraints following incidents at oil refineries in the country, Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said, as per Interfax.

"The situation on the domestic market is under constant control. Due to the incidents at oil refineries, a set of measures is being taken - increase of production and elimination of logistical constraints," Shulginov said at a meeting of the State Duma Energy Committee.

The Energy Ministry said on March 13 that "measures are being taken to ensure the necessary utilization of oil refining capacity simultaneously with the coordination of the actions of oil companies and Russian Railways."

We remind, Russia announced additional voluntary cuts in oil supply mainly in the form of production cuts rather than exports, as it faced curtailed refining capacity as well as stricter sanctions. Russia has declared plans to cut its oil output and exports by an additional 471,000 bpd in April-June in coordination with some OPEC+ participating countries.

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