MOL Group has completed its first certified production trial using post-consumer plastic waste as feedstock at the company’s flagship petrochemical site in Tiszaújváros, Hungary, marking a notable step toward integrating circular economy principles into large-scale polymer manufacturing.
The pilot demonstrated that polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) can be produced from recycled materials under a verified sustainability framework.
The trial was conducted under the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS standard, which verifies the traceability and sustainability of bio-based and circular raw materials along complex supply chains. MOL introduced the recycled feedstock into its naphtha-based steam cracker, generating ethylene and propylene monomers that were subsequently polymerized into PE and PP. By applying a certified mass-balance methodology, the company was able to attribute recycled content to the output despite the mixture of traditional and circular inputs in the process.
Péter Császár, senior vice president of MOL Group Chemicals, said the results confirm that “industrial-scale processing of circular feedstocks is feasible while meeting rigorous certification requirements.” He added that the achievement aligns with MOL’s aim of positioning itself as a leader in sustainable petrochemical production across Central and Eastern Europe.
The Tiszaújváros complex and MOL’s Slovnaft operations in Bratislava both obtained ISCC PLUS certification in 2024, enabling the traceable use of alternative feedstocks in steam-cracking and polymerization units. This certification is central to MOL’s SHAPE TOMORROW strategy, which targets processing up to 1.5 million tones of alternative feedstock annually by 2030 as part of a broader effort to decarbonize and modernize its downstream operations.
Alongside the pilot, MOL is advancing construction of an olefins conversion technology (OCT) unit at Tiszaújváros with a planned annual capacity of 100,000 tones of polymer-grade propylene. The company expects further optimization of process configurations and continued trials with recycled feedstocks to pave the way for full commercial deployment, reflecting a growing commitment to circular value chains within Europe’s petrochemical sector.
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