Alterra, Technip Energies, Neste launch ‘NEREA’ to further plastic chemical recycling

Alterra, Technip Energies and Neste have commercially launched Nerea, a new type of industrial offering designed to accelerate the deployment of chemical recycling projects for plastic waste. By transitioning from bespoke engineering to a standardized product model, Nerea enables waste operators, project developers, refining and petrochemical players to scale circular plastic production with enhanced predictability.

Global plastics production has nearly doubled over the past two decades, reaching approximately 431 million tons 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.

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 circular feedstock expertise, and Technip Energies’ engineering, project delivery and modularization capabilities. Alterra’s technology has demonstrated more than five years of continuous commercial operation, processing real-world plastic waste streams.

Nerea has a standardized, modular design that minimizes 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.

Fred Schmuck, Chief Executive Officer at Alterra stated: ” By combining proven technology, industrial expertise and a standardized delivery model, we’re helping reduce the barriers that have traditionally slowed the growth of chemical recycling.”

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

Lars Peter Lindfors, Senior Vice President Technology & Innovation at Neste, stated: “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.”