Mura Technology secures $100M investment from KBR

Mura Technology, a plastics recycling technology manufacturer based in London, has announced it has secured an equity investment from science, technology and engineering firm KBR, Houston. The $100 million investment will allow Mura to develop multiple new projects to remove more than 1 million metric tons of plastic from global waste streams.   

Mura says it has been partnered with KBR, its exclusive global licensing partner, since 2021. Alongside the investment, a representative from KBR management will join Mura’s board of directors to help shape the its business strategy.   

“The combination of Mura’s game-changing Hydro-PRT technology with KBR’s scalable engineering and licensing expertise has now established a world-leading alliance in the advanced recycling of plastics,” says Steve Mahon, chief resource officer of Mura Technology. “Plastic pollution is a global crisis, which requires millions of metric tons of advanced recycling to begin to address this problem. At Mura, our goal is to design and deliver projects which provide robust risk-return profiles, which ensure investor confidence and collaborations with partners such as KBR will allow us to achieve this as quickly and effectively as possible.”  

Mura and KBR have combined expertise and reach to bring Mura’s Hydro-PRT (hydrothermal plastic recycling technology), to global markets,  accelerating and de-risking the delivery of future projects.  

According to Mura, demand continues to grow for this technology, and it has since announced a licensing agreement with Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. in 2021, and strategic partnerships with Dow and Chevron Phillips Chemical Corp.   

Together Mura and its licensees plan to build facilities internationally, with the first to open in Teesside, United Kingdom, at the end of 2022. This will be followed by sites in the U.S.A. and Germany which will commence construction in the coming months. More sites are planned for Europe and Asia, including a project in South Korea with LG Chem, which will initially support the recycling of 25,000 metric tons of plastic waste.   

Each year, an estimated 300 million metric tons of plastic waste is generated, half of which is single-use plastics. Additionally, the extraction of fossil fuels and the transportation to plastic manufacturing sites emits 12.5 to 13.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year.   

Mura says the Hydro-PRT is capable of recycling end-of-life plastic, and converting mixed plastic streams into fossil-replacement oils and chemicals. This enables plastic waste to be upgraded into new plastics and other products. There is no anticipated limit to the number of times the same material can be recycled, and Mura's supercritical water technology within the process makes it scalable.   

“Building on our strong partnership of collaboration and innovation, we are very excited to announce our expanded investment in Mura,” Stuart Bradie, KBR president and CEO. “With a strategic approach to commercializing and scaling its proprietary, differentiated plastics recycling solution, Mura is very well positioned for profitable growth and value creation as the plastics circular economy develops and matures.”