Blue Cycle, a chemical recycler based in the Netherlands, announced its bankruptcy at the end of 2024.
The company opened in 2019 and started operating a pilot plant in Heerenveen in early 2023. It had a capacity to recycled around 20,000 tonnes of plastic waste into pyrolysis oil per year.
In the last days of December 2024, Blue Cycle filed for bankruptcy. According to its director Erik Witvoet, cited by the Dutch television broadcaster Omrop Fryslân, the company had faced a ‘series of setbacks’.
“Higher costs, high investments, and a delay in the start-up. In short, more money was needed than originally thought,” Witvoet said.
Blue Cycle had received an investment of €7 million from a sustainability fund of the province of Friesland. The company employed 20 workers.
Witvoet said that he considers a company restart a ‘realistic scenario’, adding that the company’s pyrolysis technology was ‘not the problem’.
“We have proven that it works, and we have been able to make very good oil. That was also already applied in the market and bought in the market, so I think that the technique and the technology have proven themselves.”
Blue Cycle is the latest Dutch plastic recycler to file for bankruptcy. In 2024, six other plastics recyclers shut down operations, including Vinylrecycling, Ioniqa, and Umincorp. Ioniqa has since announced its comeback.
Source: sustainableplastics.com
