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In the future, chemical recycling will show its advantages where conventional recycling cannot progress any further. In order to support Mura in the start-up phase and to help the technology achieve a worldwide breakthrough, igus invested four million British pounds (4.7 million euros) in January 2020 and increased the investment to a total of 5 million euros in spring 2021. Thanks to this support and the establishment and expansion of further partnerships, Mura was able to start construction of the first commercial HydroPRS plant. It is being built at the Wilton International site in Teesside in the north-east of England and is scheduled to go into operation in the second half of 2022.
The process is planned as follows: waste companies supply the plastic waste to achieve their recycling goals. Oil is then obtained that is available at a similar price to fossil oil. In the first phase, a total of four catalytic hydrothermal reactors will be built in Teesside to process more than 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year. In addition, further plants are planned in Germany, the US and Asia, among other places.
In April 2021, Dow Chemical, the world's second-largest chemical company, became another partner. The collaboration will further advance the scaling of Mura's advanced recycling process: Dow will use the newly extracted raw materials to develop new plastics for food packaging and other packaging products that will eventually be recycled back into global supply chains.