SABIC, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a global leader in the chemicals industry, reaffirmed its commitment to accelerating the circular carbon economy during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos by unveiling its ambition to process one million metric tons (1000 kt) of Trucircle™ solutions annually by 2030. SABIC used its reception hosted in the company’s iconic ICEhouse™ (Innovation for the Circular Economy) with global business figures and policymakers, to outline its new advances on its sustainability journey.
Abdulrahman Al-Fageeh, SABIC CEO, said, “At SABIC, we are committed to helping provide our customers with more sustainable solutions, and our target of one million metric tons of TRUCIRCLE™ solutions by 2030 intends to help usher in the new circular economy.” He added, “Driving circularity for plastics will require a rapid transformation of the entire value chain, which only is possible through collective action, innovation and collaboration across the industry and ecosystem of waste management. Therefore, we are working hard with downstream and upstream partners to accelerate this process.”
SABIC pioneered the industry back in Davos in 2019 when it announced plans to build a world-first small-scale commercial unit to produce certified circular polymers from the advanced recycling of used plastics. Since then, SABIC has been employing existing facilities to process smaller volumes of advanced recycled materials for brand owners and customers for a variety of applications already available in the market.
Construction of the company’s first commercial unit in Geleen, the Netherlands, is entering the final stages and deliveries of the first circular polymers are expected in 2023.
As a next step on the roadmap to meet this 2030 target, SABIC will upscale global volumes of advanced and mechanical recycling as well as bio-based materials. In that context, SABIC also announced it is exploring a new world-scale commercial advanced recycling investment that would have a potential capacity to process around 200 kilotons (kt) of circular materials per year, as well as other projects such as a small-scale advanced recycling plant in Saudi Arabia.
Since 2020, SABIC’s certified circular polypropylene has been used in ice cream tubs from Unilever’s A-brand ice cream brand, Magnum, the first to use recycled plastic in the ice cream industry. In another collaboration, SABIC teamed up with Mars and Landbell for an innovative closed-loop recycling project designed to close the loop on KIND® snack bar wrap based on certified circular polypropylene.
For more information, visit www.sabic.com.
