Vienna, March 20, 2025 $OMV (-5,53%) Press release
OMV today announced a significant milestone in the chemical industry, following 15 years of pioneering research and development. The company has now started the next expansion stage of its innovative, proprietary ReOil® technology at the Schwechat refinery near Vienna. The new OMV plant can process up to 16,000 tons of hard-to-recycle mixed plastic waste per year - equivalent to the annual plastic waste volume of 160,000 Austrian households.
Alfred Stern, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of OMV: "The essential materials of the future must become more sustainable and circular. OMV's chemical recycling technology plays a central role in the growth of our Chemicals business. The commissioning of the new ReOil plant is an important milestone on our path to becoming climate neutral by 2050 at the latest. In addition to mechanical recycling, ReOil processes plastic waste that would otherwise not be recyclable and feeds it back into the value chain. With our Strategy 2030, we are successfully driving forward the circular economy as part of our responsible transformation."
ReOil was first developed in 2009 and positioned OMV as a global pioneer in chemical recycling. The aim was to improve the sustainability of plastics by reintegrating valuable resources back into the value chain instead of disposing of them through incineration or landfill. ReOil achieves this by converting mixed plastic waste into pyrolysis oil, which serves as a raw material for the production of sustainable base chemicals. These chemicals are then further processed into numerous important everyday applications, including food packaging, healthcare products and electric vehicle components. The ReOil technology also has a positive environmental impact: in 2030, a 34% reduction in CO2 emissions can be achieved by chemically recycling mixed end-use plastic waste in the ReOil plant instead of incinerating it.1
The first ReOil pilot plant at the OMV Schwechat refinery has been in operation since 2018 and has so far achieved almost 30,000 cracking hours. During this pilot phase, more than 2.1 million kilograms of plastic waste were processed sustainably. The successful operation of this pilot plant led to the decision to build a larger, upscaled plant, which OMV has now completed and commissioned. Both ReOil plants are ISCC PLUS2 certified.
In the next step, OMV is developing its first large-scale industrial plant for chemical recycling. The final investment decision for this plant is subject to internal approvals. On March 12, 2025, OMV received a commitment of up to EUR 81.6 million in EU funding for the large-scale industrial ReOil plant - the largest public funding the OMV Group has ever received.
