Emerging Plastic Recycling Tech: Stepwise Validation with Multinationals

Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: ADUR) (CSE: ACT) (FSE: 9D5) is in the process of commercializing its proprietary plastic recycling technology. The Hydrochemolytic™ (HCT) platform breaks down complex plastic (and heavy oil) molecules into smaller ones that are more usable. Using a water-based environment, Aduro is able to chemically produce an oil from diverse, minimally sorted and cleaned plastics that can then be seamlessly inserted into existing plastic production lines.

If it sounds complicated, it is. Companies around the world have been trying for years to solve the plastic recycling problem but have so far come up short. Current technologies are capable of processing only one kind of plastic, or require the feedstock to be completely free of any other materials, or use so much energy that it doesn’t make economic sense to even recycle, or depend on such large economies of scale that it doesn’t work outside of major population centers, or create a product that requires significant hydrogen treatment and purification before it can be used to make new plastic.

While Aduro still needs to execute its scaling and commercialization plan, all signs point to the company having solved the issues mentioned above. HCT can manage several plastic types at once, including some of the hardest to recycle. It actually uses impurities in the feedstock as a catalyst for the chemical reaction. And it operates at a much lower temperature than current systems like pyrolysis. As an added bonus, HCT is highly scalable and employs commonly available industrial equipment that can be found most anywhere in the world.

The Commercialization Plan

Aduro recently published an interesting blog post about the various stages of commercialization. The company is in stage 3 of 5, the Pilot Scale step. Its pilot plant is fully built and commissioned, and data is being collected while the systems are tested in a continuously operating environment. These milestones are not completed overnight, and great care is taken at each phase to ensure the next one is designed successfully.

Watch a video by Stock Research Weekly on X in which the creator breaks down in detail recent Aduro news and connects the dots in the commercialization process.

https://x.com/StockResearchWk/status/2017978973842551048

As referenced in the video and the blog post, the next step is a Demonstration Scale facility. Aduro recently announced the site selection for the small industrial plastic recycling plant, on the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in the Netherlands. Think of Chemelot as an innovation hub for advanced technologies that contribute to the achievement of a truly circular economy. Aduro has a long history with Brightlands Chemelot as a collaborator, and Eric Appelman, Aduro’s Chief Revenue Officer, came to the company after serving as CTO and Director of Marketing and Sales at the Chemelot Campus.

Why Brightlands is Important

The video referenced above does a deep dive on this topic and you should watch it to get the complete picture. But some crucial bits of information here can help you understand. Linde plc, the world’s largest supplier of industrial gases and a major player in the broader chemical industry, has operations there. Linde has teamed with Coolbrook to develop an electrified steam cracker system (announced in early 2024) that vastly reduces CO2 emissions while greatly improving process efficiency over current fossil-fuel powered steam crackers.

The pilot cracker plant is located on the Brightlands site. Steam crackers process fossil-fuel derived naphtha into the building blocks of new plastics. In November 2025 Aduro announced “the successful completion of pilot-scale steam-cracking trials by a global organization that designs, licenses, and services large-scale petrochemical steam-cracking operations and supports global deployment of these technologies among leading petrochemical producers.” As pointed out in the video, that basically describes Linde and the Coolbrook pilot scale cracker.

Validation from Multinationals

Whether or not the steam cracker trial was conducted by Linde, it was certainly carried out by a major global player in the petrochemical industry. This continues a list of large companies that have assisted or been involved with Aduro.

Shell recently graduated Aduro from its GameChanger program, a multi-year collaboration designed to accelerate the development of and prove the efficacy of truly revolutionary technologies. The program is focused on circular innovations that reduce the carbon footprint of the chemical industry.

Through Aduro’s Customer Engagement Program, ongoing for the last few years, French energy giant TotalEnergies has been collaborating with the company to test and perfect HCT’s ability to handle the most challenging and contaminated waste feedstocks. Aduro has been engaged with several other multinational companies through the same program but most of them have not been named publicly.

Aduro engaged Zeton, a global leader in industrial plants with over 800 projects completed in more than 45 countries, for the design/build of its pilot plant. The company also hired Siemens to provide control systems and engineering services for the pilot plant. You get the picture - Aduro is not messing around with the development and implementation of HCT as it approaches commercialization. It’s a relatively small company by market capitalization, about $418 million at the time of publication, but it is collaborating with many of the largest companies in the industrial petrochemical sector.

The opportunity is enormous for a commercially effective solution that can help to process the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic that go to waste every year across the globe. Aduro’s HCT platform has been checking all the boxes to this point. Investors are encouraged to closely monitor developments as the company advances through the final stages of commercialization.