Upgrade of chemical recycling technologies at Porvoo refinery

Neste has commissioned a new liquefied waste plastic (LWP) upgrading unit at its Porvoo refinery, marking a significant development in the industrial deployment of chemical recycling technologies. The €111 million investment establishes what the company describes as the world’s largest facility dedicated to upgrading liquefied plastic waste, with a processing capacity of up to 150,000 tonnes per year. The plant is currently undergoing a phased ramp-up.

The commissioning represents an important milestone in Neste’s strategy to scale chemical recycling and produce high-quality recycled feedstocks for the plastics and chemicals industries. According to Jori Sahlsten, Executive Vice President of Oil Products at Neste, the project demonstrates the technical feasibility of processing liquefied waste plastic at industrial scale, while also highlighting the company’s capabilities in developing new technologies, establishing safety practices and building supply chains for non-traditional feedstocks.

Neste has been processing liquefied plastic waste, including pyrolysis oil, since 2020. Construction of the new upgrading unit began in 2023 as part of a broader integration with existing refinery infrastructure and was completed in late 2025. Production ramp-up started in 2026 and will proceed gradually in response to market conditions and regulatory developments.

The facility is designed to upgrade crude liquefied plastic waste into high-purity drop-in feedstocks suitable for petrochemical processing. While mechanical recycling continues to play a key role in plastics recovery, its effectiveness is often constrained by feedstock quality. The Porvoo unit targets more complex waste streams that are typically unsuitable for mechanical recycling, including multilayer packaging, mixed plastic fractions and contaminated plastics.

Maiju Helin, Director of Polymers and Chemicals at Neste, said the new unit enables the upgrading of low-quality plastic waste streams that would otherwise be directed to landfill or incineration. However, she noted that current accounting rules under the EU’s Single-Use Plastics Directive could restrict refineries’ ability to contribute toward recycled content targets. She emphasised the need to revise these rules within the framework of the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation to ensure refineries can play a role in achieving circular economy objectives.

At the Porvoo facility, liquefied plastic waste is co-processed with conventional crude oil streams. Neste applies a mass-balance methodology to allocate recycled feedstock inputs to its recycled product stream, marketed as Neste RE. According to the company, use of recycled Neste RE in plastics production can reduce virgin fossil resource consumption by more than 70% and lower greenhouse gas emissions by over 35% compared with the incineration of plastic waste and the use of fossil-based feedstocks.

In parallel with the development of its own infrastructure, Neste is also working with Alterra and Technip Energies to license liquefaction technologies aimed at enabling chemical recycling of hard-to-recycle plastic waste streams, supporting the broader expansion of circular plastics solutions.