Germany Polyester Chemical Recycling Company Builds First Pilot Plant, Receives €30 Million Funding

German polyester chemical recycling technology company matterr has received €30 million in joint funding from the EU and North Rhine-Westphalia. The company will build its first small-scale industrial chemical recycling facility in North Rhine-Westphalia, which is scheduled to be operational in 2027. The facility will have an annual capacity of 10,000 tons of recycled polyester feedstock, targeting the packaging and textile markets. This project is positioned as a "blueprint" for future scale-up to facilities with capacities of over 100,000 tons.

The total investment of the project is approximately 63 million euros, of which 30 million euros come from "Produktives.NRW" (funded under the EFRE/JTF Program NRW 2021–2027), with the remainder being matched by private capital.

The purpose of this facility is to demonstrate the industrial readiness of chemical recycling and to provide replicable engineering experience for subsequent expansion in Europe and worldwide.

The core technology claimed by the company is an atmospheric pressure polyester depolymerization process, which can break down mixed polyester waste (including textiles and multilayer packaging) into terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG).

The purified monomers can be repolymerized in existing polyester production facilities to obtain polymers of the same quality as virgin materials, thus replacing fossil-based raw materials.

This technology focuses on processing complex material streams that are incompatible with mechanical recycling, with the expectation of increasing the closed-loop proportion of hard-to-recycle PET and reducing CO₂ emissions.

 

Industrialization Path and Market Strategy

The North Rhine-Westphalia project will serve as an industrial demonstration line, providing engineering and operational data for future large-scale installations of ≥100,000 tons per year.

The roadmap includes licensing the technology to global partners to accelerate implementation and expansion in various regions.

By capturing the current PET/polyester waste streams that are still going to landfill or incineration, this initiative aims to consolidate the security of recycled material supply and align with the EU's circular economy and climate goals.

The EFRE/JTF Program NRW 2021–2027 provides a total of 1.9 billion euros in funding, with a focus on supporting innovation, sustainability, SME development, improvements in transport and quality of life, structural transformation in coal phase-out regions, and strategic technologies. Additional joint funding is provided separately by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and project owners.

The project is being scaled up in Germany, with an emphasis on technology localization and retaining the value chain locally, in order to enhance strategic independence in key technologies for the global circular economy.

For the PET recycling system, chemical recycling to monomers capable of processing "mixed materials/contaminated/multilayer structures" is expected to complement mechanical recycling, thereby expanding the pool of recyclable feedstock.

The economic efficiency of the equipment, along with the purity of the individual units, energy consumption/carbon footprint, and impurity tolerance, will be key verification indicators for subsequent scale-up.

As a demonstration of a 10,000-ton/year level, the rate of scaling and authorized replication will directly determine its penetration rate in the global market to support mainstream polyester supply.