JEPLAN, Inc. has announced the completion of a third-party allotment of new shares to the GX Promotion Organization (Datsu-tanso Seicho-gata Keizai Kozo Ikko Suishin Kiko; Japan’s government-authorized body established by law to support the transition to a decarbonized, growth-oriented economic structure), raising funds to be used for the expansion of its PET chemical recycling business.
The GX Promotion Organization was established as an authorized legal entity under dedicated legislation to serve as a central pillar of the Japanese government’s Green Transformation (GX) initiative, and has been providing financial support mechanisms aimed at mobilizing more than ¥150 trillion in combined public and private investment over the next ten years. The government’s “GX 2040 Vision” also identifies plastic resource circulation as one of its priority areas.
At present, domestic waste plastic processing in Japan is dominated by thermal recycling through incineration and cascade recycling, in which material quality tends to degrade with each reuse cycle, making the broader social implementation of technologies capable of sustaining true resource circulation a pressing challenge. JEPLAN holds chemical recycling technology targeting PET—a material used across a wide range of applications including beverage bottles, textiles, and films—that breaks down used PET to the molecular level, removes impurities, and regenerates it into recycled PET of equivalent quality to virgin petroleum-derived material.
Given that Japan depends heavily on overseas sources for most PET raw materials, the ability to circulate used PET as a domestic resource and secure a stable supply of feedstock has been recognized from an economic security perspective as well. These factors—including the advancement of decarbonization and resource circulation—contributed to the GX Promotion Organization’s decision to invest in the company.
Through this investment, JEPLAN intends to expand its utilization of waste PET feedstock. Building on more than ten years of operating a commercial-scale PET chemical recycling plant, the company aims to broaden its closed-loop (bottle-to-bottle style) recycling operations to cover not only PET bottles but also a wide range of PET products such as polyester fibers and industrial films.
The JEPLAN Group states that it will further strengthen collaboration with domestic and international partners as it advances efforts toward realizing a circular economy. The Group operates two recycling facilities—Pet Refine Technology Co., Ltd. (Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture) and the Kitakyushu Hibiki-nada Plant (Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture)—and is also pursuing technology licensing business in Japan and abroad.
【Press Release】JEPLAN Raises Funds from GX Promotion Organization — Advancing and Expanding PET Recycling Toward Resource Circulation and a Decarbonized Society —
【Related Article】Tanaka Kikinzoku Group and JEPLAN Enter Business Partnership to Cut CO2 Emissions from Precious Metal Recovery Process by 90%
【Related Article】JEPLAN and Taiyo Yuden Chemically Recycle PET Film from Electronic Component Manufacturing into High-Purity Feedstock
