Technip Energies, Alterra, and Neste launch Nerea

Global plastics production has nearly doubled over the past two decades, reaching approximately 431 million t in 2024. Circularity rates are not keeping pace with continuing consumption growth, resulting in significant volumes of plastic waste that still end up in incinerators, landfills, or released into the environment. At the same time, regulatory developments in Europe and elsewhere are driving stronger demand for recycled and circular feedstocks.

Nerea addresses this challenge by building on the collaboration agreement signed by Technip Energies, Alterra, and Neste in November 2024 and bringing together Alterra’s thermochemical liquefaction technology, Neste’s chemical recycling expertise, and Technip Energies’ engineering, project delivery, and modularisation capabilities. Alterra’s technology has demonstrated more than five years of continuous commercial operation, processing real-world plastic waste streams.

Nerea has a standardised, modular design that minimises pre-investment and reduces project complexity, while providing greater certainty in terms of cost and schedule. Designed for rapid deployment across various industrial environments, the Nerea plant converts heterogeneous and hard-to-recycle plastic waste into high-quality feedstock for the petrochemical industry.

Julie Cranga, SVP Carbon capture & Circularity Product Line at Technip Energies, said: “With Nerea, we are bringing together with our partners a proven technology, feedstock expertise, and industrial delivery in a standardised offering, ready to deploy at scale. We are now pleased to offer Nerea to our customers, and provide them with greater predictability and performance in development, investment and operations phase, helping to accelerate chemical recycling worldwide.”

Fred Schmuck, Chief Executive Officer at Alterra, stated: "Nerea reflects a shared vision among our three companies: making circular solutions easier to deploy at industrial scale. By combining proven technology, industrial expertise, and a standardised delivery model, we're helping reduce the barriers that have traditionally slowed the growth of chemical recycling. Together with Technip Energies and Neste, we're creating a more predictable and scalable pathway for transforming difficult-to-recycle plastics into valuable feedstocks for a circular economy."

Lars Peter Lindfors, Senior Vice President Technology & Innovation at Neste, added: “Neste’s recently started upgrading unit in the Porvoo, Finland refinery is the world’s largest by capacity. We know how to turn low-quality raw materials into high-quality solutions and look forward to supporting industry scale-up with robust and easy-to-deploy technology to meet our own and others’ increasing demand for liquefied waste plastic.”

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/petrochemicals/30062026/technip-energies-alterra-and-neste-launch-nerea/