AmSty, Agilyx to explore building an advanced recycling facility in Louisiana

Polystyrene (PS) producer AmSty, The Woodlands, Texas, and Agilyx Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Agilyx AS of Oslo, Norway, a developer of advanced recycling technology for plastics, have signed an agreement to explore the development of a jointly owned advanced recycling facility.

The companies say the initial scope of the project will be a 50-to-100-ton-per-day advanced recycling facility at AmSty’s styrene production facility in St. James, Louisiana. The facility will be a next-generation expansion of Agilyx’s advanced recycling technology already in use at the parties’ Regenyx joint venture operating in Tigard, Oregon, where postuse PS products are converted into virgin-equivalent styrene monomer. A feasibility study for the project is under way, with a timeline for construction and commissioning to be announced as progress continues, the companies say in a news release about the proposed venture.

"Polystyrene is an ideal material for the future of recycling,” says Dr. Randy Pogue, president and chief executive officer of AmSty. "Not only can polystyrene products offer sustainability advantages where less material is required (e.g., a polystyrene foam cup is 95 percent air), but polystyrene is particularly advantageous for advanced recycling because it can be ‘unzipped’ back to its original liquid form, styrene monomer, using 40 percent less energy than other polymers.”

“Development of this technology has picked up over the past decade, and it is time to reach a larger scale,” says Tim Stedman, chief executive officer of Agilyx. “We have been operating Regenyx with AmSty since 2019 and are pleased to expand our relationship toward a much larger facility at St. James.”

He adds, “Joining AmSty as a co-investor underlines our commitment to accelerating the implementation of Agilyx advanced recycling technology and our licensing model. We believe that our technology will significantly increase the availability of recycled content for producers.”

Feedstock for this collaboration would be accessed via Cyclyx, Agilyx’s feedstock management company. AmSty is a founding member of the Cyclyx consortium. The Cyclyx platform encompasses chemical characterization of plastics, predictive modeling of feed sources to product pathways, custom feedstock recipes and customized supply chains to deliver waste plastic feedstocks appropriate for recycling pathways.