The process will convert PET plastics for textile use. Other developers have failed to get off the ground
By Megan Quinn, Waste Dive
A German chemical recycling company, Revalyu Resources, has broken ground on its first U.S. facility. It aims to recycle 200 million pounds of post-consumer PET per year.
The company is investing more than $200 million in the glycolysis facility in Statesboro, Georgia. It expects the facility to be operational by the third quarter of 2025. Revalyu already uses glycolysis at its facility in India. The company has processed 6 billion bottles there so far, according to a news release.
Revalyu said it mainly uses recycled PET resin in the textile industry for automotive, denim, furniture, weaving, and other technical applications.
The company plans to recycle 25 million plastic bottles per day once the plant is up and running, said Jan van Kisfeld, Revalyu’s managing director. “Our first plant in the U.S. is a very important step for the expansion of our company,” he said in the news release. “Our existing and future U.S. customers have a huge demand.”
The project is meant to create 71 jobs in its first phase of operations. In its second phase, it plans to add another 50 jobs, according to the company.
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Revalyu first announced the project in January 2023. At that time, the company estimated it would invest $50 million in the “initial phase” of the project, hire 70 people, and have the facility commissioned by 2024, according to an earlier announcement.
Other chemical recycling companies have eyed Georgia for their own facilities. PureCycle, which has seen delayed progress at an Ohio site, aims to build a “polypropylene purification facility” in Augusta that it says will eventually be capable of producing 1 billion pounds of recycled resin. In May, PureCycle announced that it has approval from the local development authority to continue working on its planned project site in the Augusta Corporate Park.
But other high-profile chemical recycling projects in Georgia have failed to get off the ground. In 2022, Brightmark Energy and the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority scrapped an agreement to build a $680 million chemical recycling facility after Brightmark missed a deadline to deliver “end products” to customers of one of its locations in Indiana — a condition of its contract with the authority, according to Reuters.
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