DePoly has officially inaugurated its Showcase Plant in Monthey, Switzerland — a facility designed as a demonstration site and as the operational bridge between laboratory innovation and full industrial rollout.

Founded in 2020 as an EPFL spin‑off, the company has spent six years refining a light‑activated chemical depolymerisation process capable of breaking down PET and polyester waste into virgin‑quality monomers under mild conditions.

The Monthey plant represents the first time this technology is running at industrial scale, enabling DePoly to validate performance, qualify products with customers, and gather the operational data required for commercial deployment.

Samantha Anderson, CEO and co‑founder, captures the significance of the moment: “Innovation is often celebrated in the lab, but impact happens when the technology enters the industrial world. This Showcase Plant represents that transition for DePoly… It’s the first visible step toward a future where waste is no longer seen as a problem to manage, but as a resource that can be continuously reused.”

Technology built for circularity — and competitiveness

DePoly’s process depolymerises PET in under 60 minutes, without high heat or pressure, and can handle complex, coloured or hard‑to‑recycle waste streams. The resulting purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and monoethylene glycol (MEG) match virgin‑quality specifications and can be reintegrated into packaging and more.

This approach directly addresses the limitations of traditional mechanical recycling, where material quality degrades with each cycle. As the press release notes, DePoly’s method “breaks PET down into its original chemical components, enabling it to recreate virgin‑quality raw materials with no loss of performance.”

A blueprint for commercial scale

The Showcase Plant is designed as a proving ground for DePoly’s first commercial facility — a pioneering plant targeting 50,000 tonnes per year of processing capacity. The company expects to announce the location in the first half of 2027.

Key operational insights from Monthey will feed directly into engineering, design and customer qualification for the commercial unit. The press release emphasises this continuity:

“The lessons learned and process built at the Monthey site will feed directly into the development of DePoly’s first commercial plant — a pioneering facility unprecedented at this scale.”

With signed customer volumes of 50M CHF and strong backing from investors including BASF, Beiersdorf, MassMutual Ventures, Infinity and Una Terra Venture Capital, DePoly is positioning itself for rapid international expansion.

Outlook: Industrial circularity at global scale

DePoly’s long‑term ambition is clear: to make true material circularity an industrial reality worldwide. With strategic partnerships already forming in key markets, the Monthey Showcase Plant is the catalyst for that transition — demonstrating that chemical recycling can be fast, efficient, commercially viable and scalable.