Brightmark Energy has acquired $10m stake in plastics-to-fuel technology company, RES Polyflow, while committing to an additional $47m investment in the first commercial-scale plant to utilize this technology, which will be located in Indiana.

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Image: Brightmark Energy acquires stake in plastic-to-fuel technology company, RES Polyflow. Photo: Courtesy of Filipe Placido/FreeImages.com

Brightmark has partnered with RES Polyflow, the Ohio-based energy technology company that innovated the process for converting plastics directly into transportation fuel and other products, on the creation of a platform for developing future plastics-to-fuel projects.

Brightmark Energy president and CEO Bob Powell said: “This is a tremendous opportunity to combat a major environmental ill and create positive economic incentives in the process.

“We look forward to developing additional plastics conversion facilities both across the United States and globally over the next several years.”

RES Polyflow’s plastics-to-fuel process sustainably recycles waste that has reached the end of its useful life – including items that cannot readily be recycled, like plastic film, flexible packing, and children’s toys – directly into useful products, like fuels and wax.

Brightmark Energy chief development officer Zeina El-Azzi said: “This sustainable technology directly addresses an acute problem facing the United States: more than 91% of the 34.5 million tons of plastic domestically produced each year is not recycled. These products end up sitting in landfills for thousands of years or littering communities and waterways. We’re excited to help bring an economically viable solution to the marketplace.”

The facility will be located in Ashley, Indiana. It will convert 100,000 tons of plastic waste into 18 million gallons of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel and naphtha blend stocks and five million gallons of wax per year. That’s more plastic than the weight of 5,400 tractor trailers or seven Brooklyn Bridges.

Brightmark’s subsidiary BME Renewable Polyfuels president Jay Schabel said: “The RES Polyflow plastics-to-fuel process allows post-use plastics to be utilized in an environmentally friendly way, offering a productive end-of-life solution for this material.

“Simply attaching a positive and predictable market value to this segment of the waste stream incentivizes the use of materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill or as litter.”

A total of 136 full time manufacturing jobs will be created in Northeast Indiana when all phases of the facility are operational. BP will purchase the fuels produced by the facility, which will be distributed in the regional petroleum market. The Ashley plant will also produce commercial grade waxes for sale to the industrial wax market, which will be purchased by AM WAX.

Source: Company Press Release