UNION TOWNSHIP − Freepoint Eco-Systems announced Friday plans to open its first commercial-scale advanced plastics recycling facility in the Newark Industrial Park in 2024.
The Connecticut-based company said it will employ 70 and create 200 construction jobs for what it calls one of the largest advanced recycling facilities in the world, with the capacity to recycle approximately 90,000 tons of plastic waste per year using its pyrolysis technology.
Freepoint will occupy a 260,000-square foot building on 25 acres at 522 Milliken Drive, where Walker Manufacturing employed hundreds before it closed in 1994. The site is in Union Township, just north of the village of Hebron.
“It’s a really neat project involving a former warehouse of a major manufacturer here that’s been empty,” Licking County Commissioner Tim Bubb said. “Tons of plastics stay in domestic landfills now because a lot of that stuff was shipped to China, and they don’t do it anymore. If this represents a solution for the tons of plastics that we get in recycling that we can’t recycle, that’s a big deal.”
Freepoint obtains supplies of plastic waste not being recycled and uses high temperature reactors to vaporize the plastic in an oxygen-free environment, then sells the recycled liquid hydrocarbons to create new plastic, according to the company.
Jeff McMahon, the company’s managing director, said the facility will have a positive impact through plastic recycling, job creation and greenhouse gas reductions.
“Breaking ground on Freepoint’s flagship facility in Ohio marks the next big step in expanding our advanced recycling footprint in the United States and across the globe,” McMahon said in a press release. “Ultimately, we are working to contribute to a more sustainable circular economy.”
All recycled plastic feedstock produced by the facility will be sold to Shell in connection with a long-term supply agreement signed by Freepoint and Shell earlier this year. The recycled liquid product will be sent to the Gulf Coast.
It creates what Freepoint calls a circulatory process. New plastic manufactured by the petrochemical industry becomes consumer products, which Freepoint later returns to the petrochemical industry to make new plastic containers.
Freepoint states its work means less plastic waste is put into landfills or incinerated, leaving more oil in the ground. Overall, the process reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% compared to plastic made from fossil fuels, it said.
Alexis Fitzsimmons, director of Grow Licking County, said the company will make a $200 million investment in the Hebron site. She said the plastic products will be delivered by truck, but someday it may be received by train.
“We started talking with them in October 2021,” Fitzsimmons said. “No financial incentives, so our involvement with them was minimal.
“I think it’s a really great thing. It provides an outlet for plastics recycling in our market that currently go to a landfill. If you’re not in a market for a recycler to sell that type of plastic, it just goes into the landfill.”
Suppliers will include industrial customers who collect waste material as part of its process, as well as recycling companies who receive plastic they cannot recycle. Rumpke, for example, collects Licking County’s recycling products, but some products it does not recycle.
Licking County Recycling advises customers not to put plastic cups, plates, straws, bags, take-out containers, utensils and fast-food cups, straws and lids into the recycling bins. It does accept plastic bottles, jugs and tubs.
Freepoint recycles a wider variety, including grocery bags, jugs, shampoo bottles, bread bags, garbage bags, toys, 6-pack rings, bottle caps, ketchup bottles, chip bags, styrofoam containers, egg cartons, packing peanuts, baby bottles, car parts and Tupperware.
The company cited the area’s business-friendly environment and skilled workforce as reasons it chose Union Township for its facility. The company also said there are advantages to being in an industrial park and it hopes to reclaim waste material from its neighbors.
