The cards are being reshuffled in the global chemical and recycling market. Technip Energies, Alterra, and Neste have announced the commercial launch of Nerea™, developed to provide an industrial-scale solution to the plastic waste crisis.
Shifting away from traditional "custom engineering" solutions, Nerea™ introduces a standardized product model. This allows waste operators, project developers, and petrochemical companies to scale circular plastic production with significantly greater predictability and speed.
An Annual Crisis of 431 Million Tons and Rising Regulatory Pressure
Global plastic production has nearly doubled over the past two decades, reaching approximately 431 million tons in 2024. Because recycling rates cannot match this consumption speed, millions of tons of waste end up in landfills, incinerators, or directly in the environment.
Stringent regulatory frameworks, particularly in Europe and other developed markets, increasingly mandate that companies use recycled and circular feedstocks. Nerea™ enters the market at the exact moment this supply-demand tension peaks.
Three Giants Combine Core Strengths
At the core of Nerea™ lies a strategic cooperation agreement signed by the three companies in November 2024. This new industrial model integrates Alterra’s thermochemical liquefaction (pyrolysis) technology, which has demonstrated over five years of continuous commercial operation processing real-world waste streams, with Neste’s extensive chemical recycling and feedstock expertise, and Technip Energies’ global engineering, modular production, and project delivery capabilities.
Modular Design Minimizing Costs and Risks
Nerea™ converts even heterogeneous (mixed) and the most difficult-to-recycle plastic waste into high-quality chemical feedstock for the petrochemical industry.
The biggest advantage of the product is its standardized modular design. This industrial approach:
Minimizes upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) for investors.
Eliminates project complexity.
Provides certainty in budget and project delivery schedules.
Commitment from Industry Leaders
Julie Cranga, Senior Vice President of the Carbon Capture and Circular Products Line at Technip Energies:
Through Nerea™, we have integrated proven technology, feedstock expertise, and industrial delivery into a standardized product ready for large-scale deployment. By providing customers with greater predictability and performance during development, investment, and operational phases, we will accelerate global chemical recycling.
Fred Schmuck, CEO of Alterra:
This collaboration reflects our shared vision to make circular solutions easier to deploy at an industrial scale. By removing the traditional barriers that have hindered chemical recycling, we have built a predictable path to convert hard-to-recycle plastics back into the circular economy.
Lars Peter Lindfors, Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Neste:
We recently upgraded the unit at our Porvoo refinery in Finland, making it the largest in the world in terms of capacity. We know how to turn low-quality waste into high-quality solutions, and we look forward to supporting industry scale-up to meet the growing demand for liquefied waste plastics.
