Recycling technologies
Transforming end-of-life plastic into circular solutions
Plastics are essential to modern life, keeping our food fresh, our vehicles light, and our medicines sterile. However, most plastics currently follow a linear lifecycle, in which they are produced, often used once, and then discarded – typically ending up in landfills or incinerated. A circular economy addresses this by keeping materials in use longer and reducing waste and emissions through the principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle.
While most recycling today is mechanical, chemical recycling is an essential complement that offers several unique advantages:
- It can handle hard-to-recycle plastics that can’t currently be mechanically recycled, diverting them from landfill or incineration, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to incineration.
- Plastic can be recycled indefinitely without a reduction in quality.
- It produces feedstock that can be transformed into polymers of virgin quality, indistinguishable from those made from fossil-based sources. This makes it suitable for highly demanding applications, including food contact materials, healthcare products, electric vehicles, and photovoltaics.
These benefits make chemical recycling an important part of building a circular economy and help stakeholders across the value chain meet their sustainability goals.
ReOil®
ReOil® is our proprietary chemical recycling technology that converts end-of-life plastics into circular feedstock for the production of chemicals, in particular new plastics. We operate ReOil® at our Schwechat refinery in Vienna and are continuously investing in advancing this technology to ensure a reliable supply of circular feedstock for the market.
ReOil® is part of our sustainable base chemicals portfolio, designed to support our industry’s shift toward circular feedstocks.
How does the ReOil® process work?
The process begins with pyrolysis, where plastics are heated in an inert environment to 400-450°C, producing pyrolysis oil. This oil can then be processed into a base chemical that replaces fossil hydrocarbons as feedstock in the production of new plastics.
What makes ReOil® special?
ReOil® is one of the most advanced and scalable chemical recycling technologies on the market. Developed and operated by OMV, it is backed by more than 15 years of in-house testing and piloting. The result is a proven technology designed to support the highest capacity single-train plants on the market.
ReOil® in action
We operate a ReOil® plant at our Schwechat refinery with a processing capacity of up to 16,000 metric tons of mixed plastic waste per year – equivalent to the annual plastic waste generated by 160,000 Austrian households. The new plant builds on the experience gained from our pilot unit, which has been operating since 2018.
Sustainability, assured
Our ReOil® plants are ISCC PLUS certified, which ensures that the circular content is verifiably tracked and traced throughout the supply chain. This approach allows for accurate accounting of materials at every stage of the production process, providing a clear and credible way to attribute recycled content.
Europe’s largest waste sorting facility
We’re working with Interzero on building a state-of-the-art sorting facility in Walldürn, Germany. This facility will provide steady volumes of end-of-life plastic waste for our ReOil® plants, supporting a stable supply of circular feedstock for our customers and creating new jobs across the value chain.
An industrial ReOil® plant
We’re planning an industrial ReOil® plant capable of processing up to 200,000 metric tons of end-of-life plastics per year.
The plant is designed to handle hard-to-recycle plastics that aren’t suitable for mechanical recycling. With its large capacity, it will prevent significant amounts of end-of-life plastic from ending up in landfill or being incinerated—instead turning it into a valuable, circular resource.
This circular feedstock will replace crude oil in the production of new chemicals, in particular plastics. High quality and produced at industrial scale, it will help reduce reliance on fossil resources—supporting a more sustainable supply chain for the chemical industry.
Key facts
- Where: our Schwechat refinery, Austria
- Capacity: up to 200,000 metric tons of post-consumer plastics per year
- Emissions: expected to avoid nearly 2.2 million metric tons of CO₂ over its first decade, compared to incineration
- Funding: up to EUR 81.6 million from the EU Innovation Fund
- Status: final investment decision pending
Funding
The ReOil industrial plant project was selected to receive up to EUR 81.6 million in funding under the Innovation Fund 2023 Call. It is one of very few plastics or chemical recycling projects to be selected by the EU Innovation Fund, underlining OMV’s innovation strength and the potential of ReOil technology to drive the circular transformation of the chemicals industry.
This project is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.