Alterra postpones PA chemical recycling facility plans

Alterra Energy LLC, an Akron, Ohio-based provider of pyrolysis-based chemical recycling technology for discarded plastic, has postponed plans to build a facility in central Pennsylvania.

A letter from Alterra Chief Development Officer Bilal Khan to officials in Sugarloaf Township, Pennsylvania, linked to in an Aug. 22 Chemical & Engineering News report, indicates the company reached an impasse with the landowner of the Sugarloaf Township site.

“We had been operating under mutually understood expectations related to a lease arrangement; however, the landowner has recently shifted to a purchase-only requirement,” writes Khan to the township’s supervisors in the August 8 correspondence.

The executive says that exchange makes the site unworkable within our current development model and timeline.

Although Khan says Altera is pausing contact with Sugarloaf Township regarding the specific site, he says the company is maintaining active discussions with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection relating to an air permit and will continue to monitor land opportunities within the surrounding area.

In the report on the postponement, Alexander Tullo of Chemical & Engineering News writes that environmental advocacy groups had begun to cultivate opposition to the plant in Sugarloaf Township and nearby area.

Alterra has attracted investment capital this decade, including from Netherlands-based Infinity Recycling and from global petrochemical firms.

The chemical recycling company’s roots trace back in part to the former Vadxx Energy, which Alterra acquired in 2019.

Longtime Alterra employee Scott Sass, who previously had worked with Vadxx, said of Alterra in a 2023 interview with Recycling Today, “Really what we focus on [is] taking harder-to-recycle plastics and converting them into a synthetic crude oil that we can then give to the [petrochemical] companies [for further] refining and convert[ing] those into feedstocks for making new plastics.”

Alterra operates a plant in Akron that has the capacity to process about 20,000 metric tons of plastic scrap per year while its environmental permits for the intended Pennsylvania facility were for a capacity of up to 80,000 metric tons per year.