Press release from Halden Municipality and Rena Quality Group

Recycling of plastic with new environmentally friendly technology

New technology shall contribute to Halden municipality achieving ambitious climate goals. The pyrolysis plant which will be established in Halden to recycle plastic will be the first of its kind in Norway.

Rena Quality Group AS (RQG) and Halden municipality signed an agreement Tuesday 31st of August to establish a plastic recycling plant in Halden. The facility equipped with pyrolysis technology will be established at the municipality’s waste facility in Rokke outside Halden.

RQG is owned by the investment company Eagle Group, locally known as the founder of Teknotherm and current owner of Ernex.

– Rena Quality Group will establish a complete process plant for recycling plastic at Rokke waste facility in Halden. The plant will be based on pyrolysis technology. In this way, we will recycle plastic waste into oil that later can be used to produce new products. A recycling plant with this technology does not currently exist in Norway, says Roy Moberg, COO and co-owner of the Eagle Group.

Not all plastic can be recycled traditionally
Currently, Halden municipality sends household waste to a sorting plant in Romerike. There, the plastic waste is sorted out automatically, so much of it is recycled. Nevertheless, there are many different types of plastic that cannot be recycled in this way and are therefore sent for incineration. Pyrolysis, which is a method of heating plastic to 400 – 500 0 C in an oxygen-free atmosphere, is an alternative to this.

– As a municipality, we must contribute to reducing climate emissions. We are bound by the Paris Treaty, but also by our own local climate goals. In Halden, we are constantly looking for new and smarter ways in order to achieve these goals. Establishing a small pyrolysis plant at our own waste facility will be an important contribution. This mean that much of the plastic waste that we now have to send for incineration today instead can be recycled and turned into new products. In addition, we are able to reduce the number of trips to the sorting facilities that are far from Halden, says technical director Ulf Ellingsen in Halden municipality.

Plastic waste from both the waste facility at Rokke, as well as environmental stations around Halden and from local businesses will be recycled using the pyrolysis facility. In particular, hard plastic and foil are a problem today and will be dealt with in this way.

Cost reductions
RQG will invest and deliver a complete process plant, while Halden municipality will provide areas and expertise, among other things. Neither party shall provide any financial guarantees in the project. The agreement between RQG and Halden municipality is a pilot project spanning over three years with great opportunities for expansions both during the pilot period and afterwards.

– This is a pilot project where we are happy to have Halden municipality on board as an innovative pilot customer. Through good cooperation, we will find the best operating model for a municipality so that more and more municipalities eventually can implement the solutions of tomorrow for recycling plastic waste, says CEO of Rena Quality Group, Åsbjørn Dysvik. – We at RQG have experience with pyrolysis technology from the oil industry and see great opportunities to use this technology also in plastic recycling. The plant solution that will be delivered at Rokke is based on technology delivered by a German company, Biofabrik, which has several plants operating around Europe. With a documented recycling rate of 85 percent, the plants solution will be an important contribution to the green shift, says Dysvik.

– We look forward to help realize the municipality’s climate goals and will do everything we can for the project to be successful, Moberg concludes.

Part of the agreement is that the municipality will pay an operating cost per tons of plastic waste that is recycled, and it is a solution that is economically advantageous for the municipality.

– Today we have to pay to get rid of a lot of waste. It costs a municipality a lot of money both to transport waste and deliver some of this for incineration. The cost we get from recycling plastic in a local pyrolysis plant will be lower, at the same time as the environmental benefit will be significantly greater, says Ulf Ellingsen.

The goal is for the pyrolysis plant in Halden to be operational from March 2022.

Illustration
Watch animation video of the facility here: https://youtu.be/ymtw4pL8woQ

This is what the plastic recycling plant at Rokke waste facility will look visually:

Contact information:

Ulf Ellingsen, Technical Director, Halden municipality
ulf.ellingsen@halden.kommune.no, Phone: 90661957

Roy Moberg, COO, Eagle AS,
roy@eagle.no, Phone: 906 49 339

Åsbjørn Dysvik, CEO, Rena Quality Group AS,
ad@rqg.no, Phone: 901 01 924

Henrik Diskerud Meyer, Communications Consultant, Halden municipality
henrik.meyer@halden.kommune.no, Phone: 932 56 192

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