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Recycling firm bids to become first new tenant at Grangemouth site

Kevin Keane
BBC Scotland's environment correspondent
BBC A large mechanical device with tall stacks connected to other equipment installed in a warehouse being operated by a man in a white coatBBC
The prototype 'cracker' uses chemical engineering to break plastics into component parts

A company behind a "new concept" in plastics recycling is in talks to become the first business to move into the Grangemouth green energy hub.

Remarkable Energy says its technology, which has been developed alongside experts from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, can improve the quality of recycled products.

It says Grangemouth is ideally placed to provide the skilled engineering jobs it needs to scale up from the prototype it has built.

But it wants to make the move this year while it still has a chance of attracting workers from the refinery, which closed last week.

Three bottles on a lab worktop, each with a blue cap. The closest is a darker liquid with solids floating in it. The other two are transparent liquids.
The crude product (closest) comes out of the cracker before being refined into other liquid oil-based fuels

Scotland's only oil refinery, owned by Petroineos, has stopped processing crude oil at Grangemouth after a century of operations.

In March, the Scottish and UK governments published the long awaited Project Willow report setting out long-term options for the site as it transitions away from fossil fuels.

The creation of high-grade plastics from recycled products was one of the nine options identified in the study.

Remarkable Energy has been in discussions with the refinery's owner, Petroineos, to identify a suitable site - and now wants to accelerate the move to Grangemouth.

A man with white hair and dark glasses looks to the camera in front of an industrial recycling unit.
Ed Douglas Miller, who developed the chemical recycling technique, says it has huge potential

Most mechanical recycling involving "stepping down" the quality of the plastic, or using small quantities combined with virgin materials.

Remarkable says it targets difficult to recycle plastics, and currently processes waste agricultural film.

The plastics are passed through a thermal catalytic cracker which creates a crude oil-based liquid.

That liquid can then be refined into the component parts which are used in the manufacture of plastics.

Company founder Ed Douglas Miller says it is a circular process which creates the building blocks of plastics.

"This is groundbreaking stuff," he said.

"This is a new concept in recycling, a new way to address it.

"It's ridiculous how much plastic is being made and how little is being recycled."

A team of workers operating the demonstrator 'cracker' within a shipping container
A small scale demonstrator inside a shipping container first proved the technology works

The company says its existing prototype could deal with about 4,500 tonnes of plastic each year.

It predicts that this could rise to 20,000 tonnes within a few years on a new site at Grangemouth.

It would need 25 skilled jobs in the first six months to expand the business, increasing to 55 by the end of the decade.

Chief operating officer James Boyce has been in discussions with Scottish Enterprise and both the Scottish and UK governments about securing funding to accelerate its development.

He says the company is fundamentally a hydrocarbon processing facility like the Grangemouth refinery, but on a smaller scale.

He added: "Since the announcement of the closure of the refinery, a concern for us is many of the people who we wanted to hire will no longer be there.

"We need to adjust our time frame to meet the closure of the refinery."