Sudpack Acquires Controlling Interest in Chemical Recycler Carboliq

The packaging producer Sudpack announced it has acquired additional shares in Carboliq and appointed Dirk Hardow to lead the company as managing director.

“We regard Carboliq technology as an indispensable building block in our industry’s process of transformation toward a circular economy,” says Erik Bouts, CEO at Sudpack. 

According to Sudpack, the acquisition will bolster the company’s position in circular flexible packaging by giving it direct access to chemical recycling capacity. Carboliq uses a thermochemical process called direct oiling. This process has greater flexibility regarding infeed materials, which do not necessarily need to be polyolefin-based. The technology is suitable for converting contaminated, mixed or other plastics into oil, including flexible packaging and complex multilayer films.

Another advantage is the process requires a lower temperature of less than 400°C. The low process temperature, single-stage approach of the process and use of friction to introduce energy to the material make it possible to convert material with relatively low energy consumption.

Initial pilot projects with customers have already been successfully realized or are now in the implementation phase. “We expect chemical recycling to play a key role in the context of the upcoming PPWR (Packaging & Packaging Waste Regulation), not least to make it possible to meet the required recyclate use rates, particularly in the manufacturing of food packaging,” Hardow says.

At the moment, the Carboliq plant concept is — based on high-caloric fractions and fully continuous operation — designed to provide an annual output of approximately 10,000 tons. The secondary raw material that is distributed under the name of CLR (Circular Liquid Resource) is similar in many of its main properties to fossil oil and the products obtained from it.

Sudpack began investing in Carboliq in 2020. The recent acquisition was completed December 15.