The only product with a price on it is the process licence, and the money behind the plants is grant and equity
1 / 7
No glycolysis plant is shown being paid for monomer in volume. What is on sale is a licence to run the reaction. Axens markets Rewind PET as a complete package to buyers worldwide across packaging and textiles, built from a continuous glycolysis step plus proprietary purification, with performance guarantees and equipment inside the offer rather than a monomer specification sold separately.
Strategy
Patent output has quadrupled since 2021, and universities and small materials firms are producing most of it
2 / 7
Patent publications in this field rose from five in 2021 to twenty in 2026 through 11 November, a partial year that already exceeds every full year before it. Whatever the plant economics are doing, the rate of invention has not slowed.
Research
Continuous operation is solved in hardware, and flake size gets a workaround
3 / 7
One design abandons the stirred kettle for a column. An alcoholysis tower takes crushed PET in at the top, contacts it with ethylene glycol vapour and hot liquid in stages, removes residual water, and completes the reaction in the same vessel. It has distinct feed, leaching, plug-flow feed, friction-washing and discharge sections, which is what mass production of bottle-to-bottle product requires.
Market
The one chain that puts chemically recycled polyester into a bottle is Japanese, and brand owners had to assemble it
4 / 7
In May 2025 nine Japanese companies launched an initiative to make beverage bottles from non-food PET through chemical recycling, described as a first in Japan. The membership is the tell. Kirin Holdings, Kirin Beverage and Asahi Soft Drinks supply the bottle demand. TDK, Murata, Kao and FANCL supply the non-beverage PET. JEPLAN and its plant company PET REFINE TECHNOLOGY run the recycling.
Strategy
Half the apparent breadth is one invention published twice
5 / 7
The publication counts overstate how much distinct work exists. Grant publications sit beside their own applications, and a single invention can appear as an application, a granted patent and several national members of one family. Read the applicant list net of duplicates and the field has perhaps thirty distinct inventions rather than sixty publications.
Research
Heterogeneous catalysts exist mainly to keep the metal out of the product
6 / 7
Almost all filed catalyst work is a solid that can be filtered or packed, and the claims that separate them are recovery and working temperature more than yield. Pellets in a fixed bed. A magnetically recoverable cerium-doped nickel-iron layered double hydroxide, pulled out of the hot mixture with a high-gradient magnetic separator and reused four to six cycles. A zinc-titanium layered double hydroxide that runs at atmospheric pressure. An organic base, DBU, grafted onto porous silica, which keeps metal ions out of the monomer entirely. Carbon-doped boron nitride, filed for the same reason. An ionic liquid used at 0.5 to 3% loading, which needs no post-treatment of the product. A nickel phosphide on silica aimed at coloured and multilayer feed.
Market
Recycled PET sells below virgin resin wherever a mandate does not force the purchase
7 / 7
In April 2026 recycled polymers traded at a discount to virgin for the first time globally, as oil-driven virgin prices rose faster than recycled grades. The pattern has held in Asia. Regular-grade rPET flake was assessed at 850 a tonne and premium flake at 928.57, with buyers covering only immediate needs because most of the region has no recycled-content law.
October 2026 · Ranked by how far each patent goes beyond earlier work.
Patent
PET bottle recycling: 100% breakdown below 100°C using a dissolving solvent
What the patent does. Recyclers need bottle waste to break down faster, with less heat and fewer harsh solvents. The patent first dissolves or swells the plastic in a recyclable liquid, then uses ethylene glycol and a catalyst to make a reusable building block. In a small laboratory test, breakdown reached 100% versus 5.3% with another solvent at 120°C.