"We can bring PET back to its pure base material"

revalyu recycles plastic waste and creates high-quality materials from its base substances. What is innovative about your recycling process?

We have developed a chemical recycling process that does not require the addition of catalysts or additives. Compared to other procedures, our process is run at lower temperatures and lower pressures. This makes it particularly cost and energy efficient. During chemical recycling, we can completely dissolve existing impurities in the PET bottles and return the PET to its pure base substance. Our recycled PET is therefore of very high quality and due to its purity, it is suitable for even the most demanding applications. The quality is comparable to conventionally produced PET.

Where is the recycled PET used specifically? 

We produce extremely fine yarns for the textile industry. They are currently used in high-quality outdoor and functional clothing, but also in the automotive industry, in furniture or in technical textiles such as flame-retardant fabrics. Our plant also produces so-called r(ecycled) PET chips, which our customers in turn use to manufacture their own fabrics in the product areas mentioned above. Theoretically, recycled PET can be used for all applications based on PET.

Currently, 40 tons of PET bottles are recycled every day at the revalyu plant in India. And we won't stop there.

Our goal is to recycle 100 million PET bottles a day by 2026, which is equivalent to 1.000 tons a day. We have already started building two new plants in Nashik, India and the construction work is progressing well. At the beginning of next year, we want to start production and aim to reach a capacity of 200 tons per day in India alone. In addition, we will start building a new plant in the USA this year, which will have a capacity of 100 tons per day in its first phase. Later, we can expand to 200 tons per day in a second phase.

Where do you think your PET recycling journey is headed?

The potential is immense. So far, our focus has been on producing PET for recycled textile fibers and rPET chips from used bottles.

Our goal is to develop our technology further so that we can use it for other PET-based starting materials and end products. For example, we work on closing the PET bottle cycle with the help of our technology. In the future we want to offer recycled rPET chips as basic material for new bottles. Additionally, we want to be able to recycle other starting materials with our process, such as polyester textiles.

The longer and more intensively we work with our technology and the outstanding quality of our material, the more it becomes clear how wide the range of possible products and applications can be. This is an exciting process for all of us at revalyu. It's worthwhile to keep researching and think bigger.