Envalior and recycling technology scale-up SECARA are joining forces to develop a way to turn plastics recovered from end-of-life vehicles into circular PA6 for automotive applications, as Europe moves toward tougher recycled-content requirements.

 

The companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to test and validate SECARA’s catalytic depolymerization technology, which is designed to convert difficult, mixed plastic waste streams into high-purity caprolactam.

 

The goal is to produce a drop-in raw material that can be fed directly into Envalior’s existing PA6 manufacturing process, potentially allowing automotive suppliers to adopt recycled feedstock without changing production infrastructure, material designs or qualification procedures.

 

"Circularity is one of the defining shifts facing the automotive industry, and it can only be solved through strong partnerships across the value chain. With SECARA, we want to explore early what a scalable, high-performance circular pathway could look like and ensure Envalior is ready to support our customers as the ELV requirements take place,” says Christophe Cazabeau, EVP Performance Materials at Envalior.

 

The collaboration comes as the European Union prepares to impose mandatory recycled-content requirements under its End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation (ELVR).

 

The regulation is expected to come into force later this year. Six years after its entry into force, at least 15% of the plastic used in new vehicles will have to come from recycled sources, rising to 25% after 10 years.

 

Crucially, 20% of that recycled content must come from closed-loop sources — material recovered from end-of-life vehicles or parts removed during a vehicle’s use phase.

 

That requirement could prove challenging for mechanical recycling, particularly for demanding automotive applications where material purity and performance are critical.

 

“Due to technical/quality constraints, mechanical recycling alone is insufficient to meet the ELVR closed-loop requirements in demanding applications,” explains Artur Völk, Circular and Low-Carbon Solutions Lead at Envalior. “SECARA’s chemical recycling solution therefore offers a promising way forward to effectively balance advanced performance properties and regulatory compliance.”

 

SECARA’s process is designed to tackle one of the biggest obstacles to recycling technical plastics: complex waste streams containing additives, contaminants and reinforcement materials.

 

“Our recycling process is designed to handle the large industrial mixed-waste streams containing material inclusions such as glass fibers, flame-retardants and other additives or contaminations. We selectively break up the target polymers in those waste streams and transform them into drop-in quality monomers”, says Fabian Nagel, CEO at SECARA. 

 

“By addressing the challenge of mixed waste streams, our recovery route can deliver a scalable platform that we believe can be a cost-competitive solution for upcoming circularity requirements as well as a core pillar of the resilient and sustainable technical polymer industry of the future.”

 

The companies have already been working on the project for a year, with the initial focus on producing caprolactam from post-consumer recycled material for PA6.

 

The development effort is aimed at balancing cost and purity while maintaining the performance of virgin PA6. SECARA's monomers are intended to meet drop-in specifications, allowing them to enter existing polymerization processes without major changes to equipment, product design or qualification.

 

If the technology can be scaled successfully, the partnership could give automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers another route to meeting emerging circularity requirements while maintaining the performance demanded of technical polymers.

 

For Envalior, the project also forms part of its CARES sustainability strategy and broader effort to help customers transition toward circular automotive materials.