Weekly Report | US Announces Reciprocal Tariff on PET and rPET; Hubei Dawu PET Recycling Industrial Park Tender

Domestic Hot Topics

On September 9th, the Phase I project (EPC) of the multi-level PET circular economy industrial park in Dawu County announced its construction report (Project No. HBDW-202509FJ-015). The bidding enterprise for this project is Yixun Resource Recycling (Hubei) Co., Ltd. The project location is in Lechong Community, Chengguan Town, Dawu County, east of Changxing First Road, and south of the planned Ring First Road, with a total investment of 512.9188 million yuan.

The construction (tender) is divided into two phases, Phase One and Phase Two. Phase One involves an investment of approximately 608.2324 million yuan, covering an area of about 200 acres, with a total construction area of approximately 100,000 square meters. It includes the construction of a production line with an annual output of 200,000 tons of recycled PET polyester bottle flakes, a production line for 100,000 tons of recycled PET polyester chips, and a PE/PP granule production line. The planned start date is October 10, 2025, with a construction period of 730 days.

On September 10, the Sanming Municipal Science and Technology Bureau issued a notice on the release of the 2025 Sanming "Challenge Trophy" Project List. List Two: Key Technology Research and Industrialization of Environmentally Friendly Recycling of Waste Polyester into High-Strength Polyester Yarn (Guide Code: SM2025H132).

Recently, Hengshen Group, a leading global company in the nylon industry, and Ambercycle, an innovative company in the field of circular materials, made a joint appearance. At the conference, Cai Lingzhi, the Director of Sustainable Development Strategy at Hengshen Group, shared the latest progress of the collaboration. He introduced that Ambercycle focuses on polyester regeneration, while Hengshen is deeply involved in the field of regenerated nylon. The core of their collaboration is the "Textile-to-Textile" closed-loop recycling model, empowering the circular utilization of two major types of synthetic fiber materials: polyester and nylon.

The phosphorus chemistry team has made new progress in the catalytic recycling of waste plastics using black phosphorus.

Recently, the Phosphorus Chemical Engineering team from the School of Chemical Engineering at Kunming University of Science and Technology has made new progress in the research of black phosphorus-catalyzed recycling of waste plastics. The related results have been published in the top international catalysis journal, ACS Catalysis (Impact Factor 13.1, Top Q1), under the title "Effects of Conduction Band Edge Regulation on the Photoreforming Efficiency of Plastic Waste: Taking BPNS/TiO2 as a Photocatalyst."

Zhejiang University team develops depolymerization strategy to convert waste PET plastics into high-value ester compounds.

Recently, the team led by Mei Qingqing from Zhejiang University published a study titled "A general esterolysis strategy for upcycling waste polyesters into high-value esters" in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers proposed and validated a general "esterolysis" chemical strategy that enables the efficient conversion of various waste polyesters into high-value ester compounds.

The research team designed a reaction system using dimethyl carbonate as the substrate and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([EMIm][OAc]) as the catalyst. This system not only achieved near-quantitative yields of high-value target products in the chemical recycling of common waste plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) but also demonstrated the broad applicability of this method to various polyester materials, providing a new chemical pathway for the valorization of waste plastics.

Recently, Rizhao Customs under Qingdao Customs seized a batch of crushed plastics, totaling 44.83 tons, which are actually prohibited solid waste imports.

When customs officers inspected an imported shipment declared as "polybutylene terephthalate" plastic scraps, they found that the batch consisted of a mixture of multicolored plastic fragments of various shapes, some of which were irregular scraps and damaged parts.

According to the identification by Qingdao Customs Technology Center, the main components of the goods are actually polyhexamethylene terephthalamide, polytetrafluoroethylene, etc. They are a mixture of defective products, scraps, or offcuts generated during the plastic processing, which are classified as solid waste.

International Hotspots

On September 5, 2025, the South Korean Ministry of Environment officially announced a draft revision, which stipulates that starting from January 1, 2026, all PET bottles for bottled water and non-alcoholic beverages must contain at least 10% recycled material. Furthermore, the government plans to gradually increase this percentage, aiming to raise the usage rate to 30% by 2030, in order to further reduce plastic waste and promote the development of a circular economy.

It is worth noting that PET bottles for beer are not included in this mandatory regulation. According to the South Korean distribution industry, beer PET bottles account for about 15% of overall sales. Because beer is sensitive to sunlight and oxygen, companies often use brown PET bottles to maintain flavor and aroma, which have a different structure from regular transparent single-layer PET bottles. The Ministry of Environment stated that it will first focus on building a circular economy system centered around transparent PET bottles and will gradually expand to include beer bottles in the future.