The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, announced a new agreement extending a loan to The Netherlands-based Ioniqa Technologies to facilitate the development of Ioniqa’s proprietary technology to produce high-grade, recycled PET content from hard-to-recycle PET waste. The agreement is designed to accelerate the development and deployment of high-grade recycled content PET for use in bottles used by The Coca-Cola Co.

This investment supports the company’s global vision to work toward a World Without Waste, which includes a goal to create packaging made of at least 50 percent recycled material by 2030. The new technology supports the circular economy for plastics by allowing packages such as colored PET bottles that could have been excluded from certain recycling streams to be recycled into food-grade quality packaging.

The agreement is intended to accelerate scale-up of Ioniqa’s recycling technology for PET. Ioniqa has developed a proprietary recycling technology that is able to convert hard-to-recycle PET-containing waste like colored bottles into purified polymer building blocks that can be later reformed into high quality PET. The technology has been validated at the demonstration scale with value chain partners, and a 10-kMT industrial plant is under construction in The Netherlands for commissioning in 2019.

“Our investment in new and pioneering recycling technologies is an opportunity for significant movement toward closing the loop and creating a circular economy for PET,” said Robert Long, chief innovation officer for The Coca-Cola Co., in a statement. “We plan to continue investment in developing the right partnerships and initiatives — like with Ioniqa — to support our vision of a World Without Waste.” BI