What if used plastic bottles, PET packaging, and polyester textiles could become raw materials just as effective as virgin resources? That is the goal of DePoly, a Sion-based company specializing in circular materials, which inaugurated its demonstration plant in Monthey in early July. As the first depolymerization facility of its kind and scale in Switzerland, this industrial demonstration plant represents a major milestone in the company’s growth and its path to commercialization.
At a time when more than 450 million metric tons of plastic waste are generated worldwide each year—of which less than 10% is actually reused—DePoly views plastic waste as a valuable material resource. Reintroducing it into production chains not only reduces dependence on fossil resources but also strengthens the resilience and sovereignty of supply chains.
Unlike traditional recycling, which gradually degrades the quality of materials with each cycle, DePoly’s technology breaks down PET into its original chemical components, enabling it to recreate virgin-quality raw materials with no loss of performance and suitable for all PET applications.
From the Laboratory to Industrial Scale
Founded in 2020 as an EPFL spin-off by Samantha Anderson, Chris Ireland, and Bardiya Valizadeh, DePoly was born out of a vision to make plastics truly circular. Based in Sion and with a team of about 30 employees, the company is taking a decisive step forward with the opening of its demonstration plant in Monthey.
To house this first industrial facility, DePoly chose to set up operations in the heart of the Monthey Industrial Park (CIMO), which combines state-of-the-art infrastructure, chemical expertise, and proximity to its headquarters in Valais—an environment that has enabled the company to accelerate its expansion while drawing on a well-established industrial ecosystem.
The result of a significant investment—which has created 12 direct jobs and more than 30 indirect jobs—the demonstration plant has a nominal capacity of approximately 500 metric tons of raw materials per year. Beyond production, it will be used to optimize the process, validate raw materials with industrial customers, and prepare for the launch of DePoly’s first commercial plant, which is targeting a capacity of 50,000 metric tons per year.
“Innovation is often celebrated in the lab, but it’s when technology enters the industrial world that it has a real impact. This demonstration plant embodies that transition for DePoly; it’s the moment when the vision becomes a reality, and it represents much more than just steel, pipes, and equipment. It symbolizes six years spent wondering whether the circular economy was possible—and proving that it is. It is the first concrete step toward a future where waste will no longer be seen as a problem to manage, but as a resource that can be continuously reused, and DePoly will spearhead that future,” says Samantha Anderson, CEO and co-founder of DePoly.
An alternative to traditional recycling channels
DePoly’s process is based on light-activated chemical depolymerization, capable of processing PET in less than 60 minutes without requiring high temperatures or additional pressure. This approach makes it possible to recover the material’s original monomers, which can be directly reused in existing industrial processes without any loss of quality.
Its strength lies in its versatility. It processes a wide range of waste streams that are not adequately handled by current conventional recycling methods: food packaging, polyester textiles, complex films, and colored or contaminated materials. The recovered raw materials are used in sectors as diverse as packaging, textiles, automotive, and electronics.
An Industrial Breakthrough for Switzerland and the Circular Economy
Beyond its environmental impact, DePoly’s technology addresses strategic industrial challenges. By transforming local waste into raw materials of virgin quality, the company helps ensure access to essential resources, strengthens supply chain resilience, and reduces dependence on fossil-based materials. It also opens up new opportunities for sectors that are particularly difficult to decarbonize, such as technical textiles, the automotive industry, and electronics.
The inauguration of the demonstration plant last July marked a major milestone for DePoly and for Switzerland’s industrial innovation ecosystem. It demonstrates that DePoly is not only capable of developing revolutionary technology, but also of successfully scaling it up to an industrial level to address one of the major challenges of our time: conserving resources by keeping materials in circulation while strengthening industrial competitiveness.
Outlook
The demonstration plant serves primarily as a model for scaling up to commercial production. It enables DePoly to demonstrate its technology on an industrial scale, validate its products with customers, and collect the operational data needed to deploy its future commercial facilities.
The lessons learned and the process implemented at the Monthey site will directly inform the development of DePoly’s first commercial plant—a pioneering facility unprecedented in scale, which is already in the planning stages and whose location will be announced during the first half of 2027.
With a target capacity of 50,000 metric tons per year, this plant will mark a decisive step toward the large-scale deployment of DePoly’s technology. Beyond this next step, DePoly has already positioned itself for international growth through commercial projects and strategic partnerships in key markets around the world. The long-term goal: to make material circularity an industrial reality on a global scale.
Key Figures
- Value of signed orders: 50 million CHF
- Nominal capacity of the demonstration plant: approximately 500 metric tons of raw materials per year
- Up to 75% fewer emissions compared to virgin PTA*
- 20% of the world’s oil is used to produce plastic
- Approximately 600 billion PET bottles are produced each year
- 57% of the textile fibers produced worldwide are made of polyester
- 450 million metric tons of plastic waste are generated worldwide each year
- Less than 10% of plastic waste is reused
*Based on output from the demonstration plant, including emissions credits from waste incineration.
Source: DePoly press release
