Page 69 - Plastics News Issue June 2025

PRODUCT NEWS

Macrocycle recycling process itself. Testing con- may take notice at the prospect of cheap resin.
ducted thus far has found the resulting rPET
product to be free of BPA and to have only low Macrocycle recently raised $6.5 million in fund-
levels of acetaldehyde. ing to commercialize its PET recycling technol-
ogy, which the company will use to expand op-
Rosenboom’s work in ring opening polymeriza-
tion began as part of his Ph.D. research at ETH
Zurich. At that time, the focus was on finding pro-
cesses for polyethylene furaonate (PEF), a bio-
based polyester. Later, this technology formed
the foundation for Macrocycle, which Rosen-
boom formed with Feliz at MIT. “Soon enough I
realized this fascinating ring opening-ring closing
chain equilibrium chemistry is applicable not only
to bioplastic waste but also to existing plastic
waste which is already out there,” Rosenboom
says. Instead of PEF, Macrocycle focuses on re-
cycling processes for PET, going after a polyes-
ter already ubiquitous in the market.

In discussions with potential customers, Macro-
cycle has found that requirements such as vis-
cosity can vary, especially between textile and
packaging applications. Macrocycle can produce
materials of different chain lengths to meet these
needs. “We can tune our process very well, and
are excited to offer our tailored solutions to in-
dustries,” Rosenboom says.

Based on technical and economic analysis, the
company expects to see both environmental
and economic benefits from skipping the re-
polymerization steps necessary in competi-
tive technologies which go completely back to erations and scale up pilot capacity. With the
completion of this round, Macrocycle will be
monomer. According to Rosenboom, much of
the energy demand lies in heating and cooling producing larger quantities of material so it can
work with customers to develop products such
the solvent systems, whereas depolymerization
methods incur significant costs in the purification as packaging and textiles. Currently, the compa-
ny has more requests to test material than it can
of monomers. “We believe we can be competi-
tive with fossil-grade PET,” Rosenboom says, supply. Before moving to industrial scale, anoth-
er fundraising round will need to be completed,
“so, the breakthrough is: lower energy demand
and lower cost.” Even customers that are not currently targeted for 2026 or 2027.
Source – Plastics Technology
otherwise incentivized to use recycled materials

June 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 69