November 13, 2025 14:50

Hungarian chemical MOL Group has announced plans to shut down the mechanical recycling operations of its domestic subsidiary Remat by the end of the year. The company had acquired Remat in 2022.

Remat specializes in producing recycled-based pellets from polyethylene and polypropylene, with an installed capacity of around 25,000 tonnes per year. Operations are carried out at two sites — Tiszaújváros and Rakamaz, Hungary — both equipped with sorting, washing and pelletizing lines.

“Despite significant efficiency improvement measures, Remat has generated losses in recent years,” a company spokesperson told Polimerica. “Under current market conditions, profitable operation is not realistic.”

MOL Group described the closure as part of a wider and alarming trend affecting Europe’s plastics recycling sector — a segment that, rather than contracting, should be expanding in order to meet the EU’s ambitious 2030 recycling targets.

“To close the gap between the lack of viable business cases for recyclers and the EU’s policy ambitions, urgent policy action is needed,” the company added. “Actions could include the introduction of specific incentives for made-in-EU recyclates or gradual implementation of the mandatory recycled content targets.”
“We trust that the EU regulation entering into force in 2030 will have a significant stimulating effect and give new momentum to the market for recycled products,” MOL concluded, reaffirming its commitment to finding alternative solutions to offer products containing recycled content — both from mechanical and chemical recycling sources.

In line with this strategy, MOL announced in September the production of the first polymer batches made with chemically recycled feedstock at its olefin cracker in Tiszaújváros, with attribution based on a mass balance approach (see here).

In the field of recycled materials, MOL also owns Aurora Group, acquired in 2019 — a cluster of three German companies specializing in the production of compounds based on polyamides, polyolefins, polycarbonate and POM, derived from recycled industrial scrap. These materials are primarily intended for the automotive sector but are also used in the furniture, electrical and construction industries.

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