Technip Energies, Alterra and Neste have launched Nerea, a standardized modular industrial solution aimed at accelerating the rollout of chemical recycling projects for plastic waste. This marks a shift away from custom-built engineering toward a repeatable, scalable product model.
The partners say the approach is designed to give developers, waste operators, and petrochemical and refining players a faster, more predictable route to building circular plastic production capacity.
The launch comes as the global plastics challenge intensifies. Production has nearly doubled in two decades, reaching around 431 million tonnes in 2024, while recycling rates continue to lag consumption growth.
The result is mounting volumes of plastic waste still ending up in landfills, incinerators, or the environment. At the same time, tightening regulation—particularly in Europe—is increasing demand for recycled and circular feedstocks.
Nerea builds on a collaboration agreement signed in November 2024 between the three companies, combining Alterra’s thermochemical liquefaction technology, Neste’s chemical recycling expertise, and Technip Energies’ engineering, delivery, and modularization capabilities.
Alterra’s process has already logged more than five years of continuous commercial operation, processing real-world waste streams.
The system is built as a standardized modular plant designed to cut early-stage investment risk, simplify deployment, and improve certainty on cost and schedule. It converts mixed and difficult-to-recycle plastic waste into high-quality feedstock for the petrochemical industry, and is intended for rapid deployment across multiple industrial settings.
Julie Cranga, SVP Carbon capture & Circularity Product Line at Technip Energies, stated: “With Nerea, we are bringing together with our partners a proven technology, feedstock expertise and industrial delivery in a standardized offering, ready to deploy at scale. We are now pleased to offer Nerea to our customers, and provide them with greater predictability and performance in development, investment and operations phase, helping to accelerate chemical recycling worldwide.”
Fred Schmuck, Chief Executive Officer at Alterra, stated: "Nerea reflects a shared vision among our three companies: making circular solutions easier to deploy at industrial scale. By combining proven technology, industrial expertise and a standardized delivery model, we're helping reduce the barriers that have traditionally slowed the growth of chemical recycling.
"Together with Technip Energies and Neste, we're creating a more predictable and scalable pathway for transforming difficult-to-recycle plastics into valuable feedstocks for a circular economy."
Lars Peter Lindfors, Senior Vice President Technology & Innovation at Neste, stated: “Neste’s recently started upgrading unit in the Porvoo, Finland refinery is the world’s largest by capacity. We know how to turn low-quality raw materials into high-quality solutions and look forward to supporting industry scale-up with robust and easy-to-deploy technology to meet our own and others’ increasing demand for liquefied waste plastic.”
