Dublin, Aug. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "The Global Advanced Chemical Recycling Market 2027-2040" has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
The advanced (chemical) recycling market converts plastic waste that mechanical recycling cannot process into hydrocarbon feedstocks and monomers for the production of new plastics, fuels and chemicals. Its core purpose is to address the mixed, contaminated and multi-layer waste streams - mixed polyolefins, flexible and metallised films, carbon-black-pigmented plastics, textile blends and food-contaminated material - that make up the majority of plastic waste by tonnage and that are otherwise incinerated, landfilled or exported.
The market is built on four principal technology families: pyrolysis, which dominates by capacity and produces an oil substitutable for fossil naphtha in steam cracking; gasification, which tolerates contamination and yields syngas, methanol and hydrogen; depolymerisation, which is polymer-specific and yields recycled monomers such as rPET, rMMA and recycled nylon; and dissolution, which recovers purified polymer. Output products range from pyrolysis oil and synthetic naphtha through recycled monomers, syngas and recovered carbon black to mass-balance-attributed circular polymers.
Demand is regulatory in origin rather than economic. Recycled feedstock is not cheaper than fossil feedstock; what creates the market is the obligation to incorporate recycled content under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, the Single-Use Plastics Directive, the End-of-Life Vehicles framework, United States state legislation and Asian mandates. Because polyolefin packaging has no mechanical route to food-contact quality at scale, meeting these mandates requires advanced recycling.
The market is capital-intensive, technically demanding and marked by a wide gap between announced and operating capacity, with listed global capacity of around 6 million tonnes per year against operating capacity nearer 1.4 million. The end-2025 EU decision adopting the fuel-use excluded mass balance method resolved the principal investment uncertainty, but a wave of project failures and delays through 2024-2026 confirmed that construction, feedstock and commissioning risks remain acute. The sector also faces sustained NGO opposition over emissions, energy use and yields, making regulatory recognition, certification and buyer qualification the decisive commercial variables.
The Global Advanced Recycling Market 2027-2040 is a comprehensive market analysis of the technologies, output products, players and demand drivers converting hard-to-recycle plastic waste into circular feedstocks. It provides a data-led assessment of a market at an inflection point, where the arrival of EU regulatory certainty on mass balance accounting meets a hard reality of project failures, delays and a fourfold gap between announced and operating capacity. The report quantifies the market by technology (pyrolysis, gasification, depolymerisation, dissolution and emerging routes), by output product, by end-use sector and by region, with forecasts to 2040 presented as ranges bounded by nameplate and realisation-adjusted capacity.
The report is intended for producers, technology licensors, petrochemical and refining companies, brand owners, investors and policymakers requiring a rigorous, current and commercially grounded view of the market. It draws on plant-level databases, company disclosures, regulatory instruments and price assessments, distinguishing announced intentions from demonstrated operation throughout.
Report contents include:
- Executive summary
- Classification of recycling technologies
- Research methodology
- Introduction: plastics production, waste, pollution, the circular economy, and mechanical versus advanced recycling
- The advanced chemical recycling market: drivers, restraints, capacities, and market sizing by technology, output product, end-use sector and region
- Plastic waste feedstock: availability, gate fees and pricing, quality and yield
- Global regulatory landscape: EU PPWR and SUPD, the 2025 fuel-use excluded mass balance decision, US state law, Asia and rest of world
- Mass balance and chain-of-custody certification
- Sustainability, LCA and the chemical recycling debate
- Investment, funding, M&A and the announced-versus-operating capacity gap
- Competitive landscape and market shares
- The pyrolysis oil (PPO) market: value chain, specification and quality, supply, demand and customers, certification, pricing, forecasts and substitution
- Advanced recycling technologies: pyrolysis, gasification, dissolution, depolymerisation, and emerging and commercialising routes
- Materials analysis and end-product analysis: chemical feedstocks, fuels, recycled monomers, syngas and methanol, recovered carbon black and circular polymers
- Company profiles
- Pyrolysis oil producer and buyer directory
- Glossary and references
Key Topics Covered
1 CLASSIFICATION OF RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
3.1 Market context
3.2 The defining tension of 2024 to mid-2026
3.3 Supply, demand and pricing
3.4 Technology diversification
3.5 The sustainability debate
3.6 Outlook
4 INTRODUCTION
4.1 Global production of plastics
4.2 The importance of plastic
4.3 Issues with plastics use
4.4 Bio-based or renewable plastics
4.5 Biodegradable and compostable plastics
4.6 Plastic pollution
4.7 Policy and regulations
4.8 The circular economy
4.9 Plastic recycling
4.10 Life cycle assessment
4.11 Chemical versus mechanical recycling: complementarity and competition
4.12 The role of advanced recycling in meeting recycled-content mandates
5 THE ADVANCED CHEMICAL RECYCLING MARKET
5.1 Market drivers and trends
5.2 Market Challenges and Restraints
5.3 Capacities
5.4 Global polymer demand 2022-2040, segmented by recycling technology
5.5 Global polymer demand 2022-2040, by recycling technology, by region
5.6 Chemically recycled plastic products
5.7 Market map
5.8 Value chain
5.9 Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of advanced chemical recycling processes
5.10 Recycled plastic yield and cost
5.11 Plastic waste feedstock supply and pricing
5.12 Market size and forecast by recycling technology 2025-2040
5.13 Market size and forecast by output product 2025-2040
5.14 Market size and forecast by end-use sector 2025-2040
5.15 Regional market analysis 2025-2040
5.16 Global regulatory landscape for advanced chemical recycling
5.17 Mass balance and chain-of-custody certification across the sector
5.18 Sustainability, LCA and the chemical recycling debate
5.19 Investment, funding and M&A landscape 2024-2026
5.20 Competitive landscape and market shares
6 ADVANCED (CHEMICAL OR FEEDSTOCK) RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES
6.1 Applications
6.2 Pyrolysis
6.3 Technology commercialisation and recent advances 2024-2026
6.4 Gasification
6.5 Dissolution
6.6 Depolymerisation
6.7 Other advanced chemical recycling technologies
6.8 Advanced recycling of thermoset materials
6.9 Comparison with Traditional Recycling Methods
6.10 Environmental Impact Assessment
6.11 Emerging Technologies
7 THE PYROLYSIS OIL MARKET
7.1 Pyrolysis oil in the plastics and fuels value chain
7.2 PPO product specification and quality
7.3 PPO supply
7.4 PPO demand and customers
7.5 Mass balance, certification and regulation applied to PPO
7.6 PPO pricing
7.7 PPO market forecasts 2025-2040
7.8 Competitive and substitution landscape
7.9 Market developments and investment climate 2024-2026
7.10 Pyrolysis Oil Producer and Buyer Directory
8 MATERIALS ANALYSIS
8.1 Plastics
8.2 Metals
8.3 Base Metals
8.4 Rare Earth Elements
8.5 Electronic Waste
8.6 Textiles
8.7 Synthetic Fibers
9 END PRODUCT ANALYSIS
9.1 Chemical Feedstocks
9.2 Recycled monomers
9.3 Syngas, methanol and hydrogen
9.4 Recovered carbon black and waxes
9.5 Mass-balance-attributed circular polymers
9.6 Fuels
9.7 Raw Materials
9.8 Energy Products
10 COMPANY PROFILES (197 company profiles)
For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/unl4d1
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