Credit: Jeff Dean/Associated Press
Danimer wasn’t able to attract enough business for its plant in Winchester, Kentucky.
Demonstrating that making sustainable plastics isn’t necessarily a sustainable business, two prominent green plastics operations—the biobased polymer maker Danimer Scientific and Brightmark’s plastics pyrolysis plant—have gone bankrupt.
Danimer filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware. It is seeking approval for $15 million in financing that will help it wind down operations and sell its assets.
Danimer opened a plant in Winchester, Kentucky, in 2020 to make polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) via fermentation. The company anticipated a vibrant market for the biobased and biodegradable polymer in single-use plastics applications like straws, cup lids, produce bags, and utensils.
Later that year, Danimer went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). It had plans to triple the size of the Winchester plant and build a large facility in Bainbridge, Georgia, at a cost of $700 million.In 2021 it purchased Novomer, which made similar polymers, for $152 million.
Danimer’s fortunes have been on the decline ever since. Short sellers, which bet against a company’s stock, hounded Danimer for changing direction with the acquisition. And the market adopted its materials too slowly to sustain the Winchester plant.
Danimer lost $72 million on $26 million in revenues during the first nine months of 2024, and it had $381 million in debt. CEO Stephen Croskrey departed in October, and the firm was later delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because it had a market capitalization of less than $15 million. The SPAC transaction valued it at $890 million.
Brightmark started construction in 2019 on a plant in Ashley, Indiana, designed to use pyrolysis to convert 100,000 metric tons (t) per year of mixed plastics waste from the region into naphtha, diesel, and industrial waxes.
But the company struggled to ramp up production there. According to a Brightmark press release from April 2024, the facility had recycled only about 2,000 t of plastics.
At the time, Brightmark announced plans for a $950 million facility in Thomaston, Georgia, that would process 400,000 t of plastics per year. The firm had shelved an earlier project in Macon, Georgia, in the face of local opposition.
Brightmark’s bankruptcy, also filed in Delaware, will allow it to maintain operations as it pursues a sale of the Ashley facility. The company says that the bankruptcy only affects that plant and that it will proceed with the Thomaston, Georgia project. In addition, Brightmark operates a string of facilities with Chevron that produce biomethane from dairy farms and food waste.
Other plastics recycling firms have struggled as the excitement over renewable plastics hits market realities. The Dutch pyrolysis firm Blue Cycle went into bankruptcy late last year, and Carbios recently delayed plans for a French polyethylene terephthalate depolymerization plant as it seeks to pin down financing.
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
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