Dow scraps plan for chemical recycling plant at Bohlen with Mura

Dow has canceled its original plan of building a 120,000 mt/year chemical recycling plant for mixed plastic waste with its technology partner Mura at its Bohlen site in Germany, a company spokesperson told Platts via an email late evening Aug. 6.

"While the Mura Hydro-PRT facility at our Boehlen site will not proceed, we are exploring other opportunities with Mura to expand our supply portfolio in Europe," said Sarah Young, director of corporate media relations at Dow, in the email.

Dow further added that it remains committed to transforming plastic waste and has plans in place with its strategic partners to continue this advancement.

The plan for an advanced recycling facility was initially announced in 2022 by Dow, as the chemical producer signed a partnership with UK-based advanced recycling company Mura Technology to build multiple sites across Europe and the US, with a combined processing capacity of 600,000 mt/year, with the first one identified to be at Bohlen.

Cloudy prospects for recycling facility

The plan cancellation came as no surprise to the market as Dow had announced in July to permanently close its steam cracker at Bohlen in the fourth quarter of 2027 due to structural challenges in Europe. As the chemical recycling process includes providing a sustainable alternative to naphtha as a feedstock to the cracker, with the announcement of permanently shutting down Bohlen's cracker, the outlook had been cloudy for the prospect of a chemical recycling plant at the same site.

The steam cracker carries a nameplate capacity of 565,000 mt/year of ethylene and 310,000 mt/year of propylene, and has been confirmed to be under technical outage since July 11, along with its downstream butadiene extraction unit.

Platts assessed the European mixed plastic waste bales, which are the feedstock for chemical recycling, at Eur250/mt on Aug. 7.