Encina Abandons Plans to Build $1.1 Billion Advanced Recycling Plant
Following a unanimous vote by the Northumberland Borough Council to oppose the construction of a chemical recycling plant by Encina on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Point Township, PA, Encina Development Group announced yesterday that it would abandon building the facility on that site.
The proposed $1.1 billion plant initially was welcomed by former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the state legislature, but opposition began to grow over concerns about PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals,” leaching from the floodplain where the facility would have been located into the river, reports the Bay Journal. “In March 2023, Point Township officials denied the company’s request for a variance on height restrictions,” writes Ad Crable in the nonprofit media outlet. “Then, on April 2, the borough council of Northumberland, a river town near the site, voted unanimously to ‘strenuously and unequivocally oppose’ the project.”
Houston-based Encina said in its press release that it will pursue multiple other projects under review or development in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Southeast Asia.
“Our extensive research shows that these projects offer Encina opportunities to meet the needs of our customers to provide their end products with ISCC+ circular chemicals to help meet their sustainability goals in the coming years at the scale they are expecting,” said CEO Dave Roesser in a prepared statement. “The demand for these products required that our company re-evaluate our engineering design to meet these larger end-product goals for our customers. Ultimately, our facilities must meet these increased demands, therefore, after careful consideration and thorough analysis, Encina’s management team has decided not to proceed with the construction of our circular manufacturing facility in Point Township, Pennsylvania, but will move forward in our other customer markets,” said Roesser.
Earlier this year, Encina signed a deal to provide polymers supplier Covestro with chemically recycled benzene and toluene for use in producing polyurethane foams and polycarbonates.
Encina has developed a single-stage catalytic conversion process that breaks down end-of-life plastics otherwise bound for landfills or incineration into their molecular constituents. The resulting “circular” chemicals can be used as building blocks for new plastic products.
While more than 300 advanced recycling, aka chemical recycling, facilities are in the works globally, according to research from nova-Institut, questions remain about the technology’s potential health and environmental risks, as well as its economic viability.
In Pennsylvania, at least, those concerns won the day.
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