A new cross-value-chain collaboration demonstrates how chemical recycling can help produce high-performance food packaging. LyondellBasell (LYB), Mondelez International, Amcor and Taghleef Industries have developed a flexible packaging solution for Marabou chocolate bars, a Mondelez brand, featuring 75% attributed recycled content.
The project uses LYB's CirculenRevive polymers, produced from difficult-to-recycle post-consumer mixed plastic waste and certified under the ISCC PLUS mass balance approach. The result is a drop-in polymer offering virgin-grade performance, enabling brand owners to incorporate recycled content into their packaging while maintaining functionality, food safety and regulatory compliance.
The new packaging solution is the result of collaboration across the packaging value chain. LYB supplies the recycled polymers, Taghleef Industries produces the base film, and Amcor converts the material into the finished flexible packaging for Marabou products.
The project also supports the industry's transition towards compliance with the European Union's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which will introduce increasingly stringent requirements for recyclability and recycled content.
According to LYB, chemical recycling is a complementary technology to mechanical recycling, particularly suited to recovering multi-layer flexible packaging, one of the most challenging waste streams to recycle back into food-grade applications.
To support the expansion of circular solutions, LYB is currently building MoReTec-1 in Wesseling, Germany, the company's first commercial-scale catalytic chemical recycling plant. Once operational, the facility will have the capacity to produce approximately 50,000 tonnes of circular feedstock per year, supplying raw materials for the production of new recycled polymers and strengthening the availability of circular feedstock for high-performance packaging applications.
