Dutch startup BioBTX has secured €20.8 million from the European Union’s Innovation Fund to support the development of PETRA, its first commercial-scale plant for converting mixed plastic waste into renewable chemical raw materials. The funding represents an important step towards the industrial deployment of the company’s circular chemistry technology.
Based in Groningen, BioBTX develops technologies that transform plastic waste and biomass into renewable aromatic compounds, including benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX). These chemicals are essential building blocks for industries such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, coatings and adhesives, and are traditionally produced from fossil resources.
The new PETRA facility, located at Chemie Park Delfzijl in the Netherlands, is designed to process approximately 20,000 tonnes of mixed plastic waste annually, particularly materials that cannot be mechanically recycled and would otherwise be incinerated. The plant is expected to produce around 10,000 tonnes of renewable aromatic oil per year.
The project will use BioBTX’s proprietary Integrated Catalytic Cracking Process (ICCP) technology, which combines thermal treatment and catalytic conversion to recover valuable chemical components from complex waste streams.
According to the company, PETRA could avoid more than 517,000 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions during its first ten years of operation, representing a 72% reduction compared with conventional fossil-based aromatics production and waste incineration.
BioBTX was also one of the finalists in the first edition of our Circular Packaging Challenge, held in 2022, an initiative organised by Ecoembes through TheCircularLab to connect innovative startups with leading companies in the packaging sector.
Four years later, this new funding marks another milestone in the company’s journey from technological development towards industrial implementation.
At Radar, we are pleased to see startups that have participated in our innovation initiatives continue to grow and advance technologies that can contribute to a more circular packaging value chain.