INEOS and Recuro sign MoU for an advanced pyrolysis plant at Bamble — a hazard set PHA teams are still building

INEOS Olefins & Polymers Europe and Norwegian recycler Recuro have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop an advanced recycling facility at INEOS’s existing petrochemical site in Bamble, Norway. The July 9 announcement puts the project — branded “Full Circle” — at up to 33,000 tonnes per year of end-of-life plastic waste converted to pyrolysis oil, then upgraded into recycled ethylene and virgin-quality polyethylene suitable for food and medical packaging.

The stated logic is integration: renewable-powered pyrolysis sited to reuse existing industrial infrastructure, land, and services at Bamble, with the recycled feedstock helping meet the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation recycled-content requirements. The agreement is at MoU stage, ahead of any final investment decision.

The pyrolysis hazard register

Chemical (or “advanced”) recycling by pyrolysis is a comparatively young unit type for many PHA teams, and its hazards do not map neatly onto conventional refining or petrochemical experience. Feedstock is variable and contaminated by design — mixed post-use plastics can carry moisture, chlorine (from PVC), metals, and other contaminants that drive fouling, coking, and corrosion, and that shift the composition of the pyrolysis vapor and oil. The reactor operates hot with a combustible-solids and hydrocarbon-vapor inventory, so char handling, over-temperature and thermal-runaway scenarios, oxygen ingress, and pyrolysis-oil stability and storage all belong in the deviation set.

Tying such a unit into a live olefins complex adds the second layer. Interface HAZOPs on the connections to existing cracker and polyethylene infrastructure, allocation of relief and flare capacity, and simultaneous-operations reviews during construction on an operating site are the recurring themes whenever a new unit lands inside an existing fence.

Regulatory frame and timing

Norway applies the Seveso III major-accident regime through the EEA, so an upper- or lower-tier establishment’s major-accident duties — safety report, major-accident prevention policy, and demonstrated risk control — apply according to the inventories involved. That is the backdrop against which the eventual hazard studies will be judged.

The practical caveat is timing: this is an MoU, not a sanctioned project. If it proceeds, the HAZID and design-HAZOP work is a 2026–27 story tied to FID and FEED, not immediate demand. It is worth logging now as a marker of where European advanced-recycling capacity — and its distinctive study load — is heading.

Details are in INEOS’s announcement.