ULSAN < invest Korea

                                                                                                                                     [Photo provided by Posco Group]                  

According to Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea,

SK Global Chemical Co. will establish South Korea’s largest-capacity plastic chemical recycling factory by spending 600 billion won ($522 million) to strengthen chemical recycling business.

The company announced Thursday that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build a plant that produces raw materials by recycling plastic and PET wastes by 2025 in Ulsan-Mipo Industrial Complex. The plant will command an area of 160,000 square meters, the size of 22 soccer fields, and become the largest chemical recycling plant in the country. The signing ceremony was attended by Ulsan City mayor Song Chul-ho and SK Global Chemical Na Kyung-soo.

The company will use depolymerization process for PET wastes, which refers to a method that breaks PETs to transform them back into initial raw material. It has secured the depolymerization technology last month by investing in Canada-based Loop Industries. It will establish a depolymerization facility with a capacity of 84,000 tons by 2025 in cooperation with Loop Industries.

For plastic waste recycling, SK Global Chemical will apply pyrolysis technology that employs heat to break the material into naphtha. By partnering with the U.S. waste recycling solution company Brightmark, SK Global Chemical will build a pyrolysis facility by 2024 that is capable of processing 100,000 tons of plastic waste a year.

The company plans to expand the recycling capacity to 900,000 tons by 2025 and 2.5 million tons by 2027 with an ultimate goal of recycling 100 percent of plastics the company produces.

SK Global Chemical will enter the overseas market with its plastic recycling business to become a major recycling player in the Asian market. It will establish depolymerization facilities in four Asian regions including Korea to have a combined annual capacity of 400,000 tons by 2030.



By Choi Keun-do and Choi Mira

Copyrights Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea. All Rights Reserved.

Source: Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea (July 9, 2021)