NEWS


Plastics Europe launches roadmap for Plastics Transition


Plastics Europe has announced plans for how the plastics industry in Europe will move towards circularity, although safeguarding global competitiveness is just as important for the body that represents Europe-based polymer producers. The Plastics Transition roadmap involves measures to reduce green- house gas emissions from the overall plastics system by 28% by 2030 and towards net-zero by 2050. It is predicted to lead to the gradual substitution of fossil-based plastics, so that circular plastics could meet 25% of European demand in 2030 and 65% by 2050 (see Plastics Europe roadmap here). The roadmap is intended “to completely redesign the European plastics sector”, said Marco ten Bruggencate, President of Plastics Europe, and Dow EMEA Commercial Vice President Packaging and Spe- cialty Plastics, during a press briefing. Plastics Europe says it recognises the huge ambition of its roadmap – which will involve €235bn in addition- al investments and operational costs – but that it is possible to transform Europe’s plastics industry and also make it competitive with other plastics-producing regions. “There is a direct correlation


tonnes of plastics, 22m tonnes, or 35%, will come from fossil-based plastics, with the remaining 65% from circular plastics, including: 15m tonnes from mechanical recycling, 12m tonnes from chemical recycling, 11m tonnes from biomass and 3m tonnes from CCU.


between the industry’s competitive- ness and its ability to execute the roadmap,” said ten Bruggencate. Virginia Janssens, Managing


Director of Plastics Europe, said the roadmap will act as “our North Star”, informing all decisions taken in the years to come. The three pillars of the transition


plans, which were presented by Maarten Dubois, Director of Sustain- ability at Deloitte, are to make plastics circular, to help drive lifecycle emis- sions to net zero and to foster the sustainable use of plastics. Based on a projection for 2050 that converters in Europe will use 65m


Chemical recycling The importance of chemical recycling to the plans was discussed during the press briefing’s Q&A session. Ten Bruggencate stressed the “need to scale up chemical recycling”. Plastics Europe is in discussions with the European Commission about the mass balance approach that is needed for polymer producers to allocate recycled content from chemical (mainly pyrolytic) recycling to new products. Janssens said Plastics Europe’s position is to accept that fuel products cannot be included in mass balance allocation as plastics-to-fuel is not considered as recycling. This results in chemical recycling having lower yields than would be the case using a free allocation approach. She said: “In other regions of the world, free allocation may be applied, so we need to be very careful.” � https://plasticseurope.org


Large falls in BASF and Covestro Q3 results


BASF Group’s sales in the third quarter of 2023 were down €6.2bn to €15.7bn compared with the same period last year. The hydrocarbons and chemicals company says the decline is mainly due to lower prices, primarily in the Materials, Chemicals and Surface Technologies segments.


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During the same period, income from operations (EBIT) before special items declined by €772m to €575m compared to last year.


In the fourth quarter of


2023, BASF expects production in the global chemical industry to stabilise. However, the


INJECTION WORLD | November/December 2023


macroeconomic outlook remains uncertain and rising raw materials prices could have an effect. Meanwhile, Covestro said


the third quarter of 2023 was characterised by a “persistently difficult market environment with continued low demand in all regions”. The group reported that


overall sales declined by 22.7% to €3.6bn, compared to €4.6bn the previous year, mainly due to lower selling prices and a reduction in volumes sold. The Group’s EBITDA fell by 8.3% to €277m compared to the previous year’s €302m. �www.basf.com �www.covestro.com


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