SEATTLE (Recycling Monster): SK Geo Centric broke ground on a waste recycling complex in Ulsan, South Korea. The Ulsan Advanced Recycling Center (ARC) was built at an investment of $1.4 billion. The facility, located in a 60-acre land parcel, is expected to be completed by end-2025.

SK Geo Centric will apply three different recycling technologies- pyrolysis, polypropylene (PP) extraction and depolymerisation on the site, in collaboration with Plastic Energy, Purecycle Technologies and Loop Industries.

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Once operational, the facility will have an initial annual reprocessing capacity of 320,000 metric tons of plastic waste. At full capacity, the plant will process 9% of South Korea’s waste plastic which is otherwise incinerated or buried. It will also process nearly 60% of the PET water bottles and plastic cups consumed every year.

The Ulsan ARC project is a blueprint for future similar projects to be implemented elsewhere. The company has already started negotiations with several countries including France, Belgium and China to set up such facilities.

The facility, which makes use of latest technologies to reinvent plastics, will ensure renaissance of the Korean petrochemical industry, said Kyung-soo Na, CEO at SK Geo Centric.