December 17, 2025 14:55
The Austrian polyolefins producer Borealis has entered into a strategic agreement with the Dutch company BlueAlp aimed at reorganizing its activities in the chemical recycling of plastic waste.
Under the terms of the agreement, Borealis will acquire a 10% stake in BlueAlp and, at the same time, transfer its majority shareholding (50.01%) in Renasci Oostende Recycling to the Dutch partner. Renasci operates a chemical recycling plant that has been active for several years in Ostend, Belgium. No additional financial details of the transaction have been disclosed by the two partners.
According to a statement, the transaction strengthens Borealis’ involvement in the chemical recycling value chain and marks a strategic step in the evolution of its activities in this field. For BlueAlp, direct operation of the Renasci plant — whose technology it originally developed — represents a natural next step, enabling faster technological innovation and a stronger plant-licensing proposition.
The Ostend plant, one of the few operating at industrial scale in chemical recycling, has a treatment capacity of 20,000 tonnes per year. It was designed and built by BlueAlp using a proprietary pyrolysis process licensed to Renasci.
Under the new ownership structure, BlueAlp will lead the next phase of development of the Belgian plant, while Borealis will continue to focus on supplying plastics based on chemically recycled feedstock attributed via mass balance.
BlueAlp’s process technology has also been selected by the Italian company RES for a chemical recycling plant currently under construction in Pettoranello del Molise (Isernia), again with a treatment capacity of up to 20,000 tonnes per year.
Founded in 2015, BlueAlp has developed and licenses — while also providing engineering and end-to-end services — a patented “slow-cracking” process operating in an oxygen-free environment. The technology is energy-efficient and scalable (from 17 to 24,000 t/y) and is particularly suited to processing low-quality mixed plastics, including multilayer films that are difficult to recycle mechanically.
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