Brightmark enters subsidiaries of Indiana recycling facility into Chapter 11

Brightmark LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, has announced that certain subsidiaries related to its Ashley, Indiana, plastics recycling facility have filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The subsidiaries are Brightmark Plastics Renewal LLC, Brightmark Plastics Renewal Indiana LLC and Brightmark Plastics Renewal Services LLC.

The company says it has filed motions to continue operations during the proceedings and to pursue an auction and sale process under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, adding that it intends to provide continued financing to allow the Ashley facility to have sufficient liquidity to maintain day-to-day operations. Brightmark says it does not expect an impact on the employment of the facility’s 90-plus workers.

RELATED: Brightmark plans $950M plastics circularity center for Georgia

“Today’s filing allows us to take control of our future,” Brightmark founder and CEO Bob Powell says. “This strategic move is designed to ensure the long-term viability of the Ashley facility and enables us to grow our business sustainably. We are excited about the future of our plastics business, and our commitment to it and the Ashley community is unwavering.”

The Ashley facility, which broke ground in 2019 and began a commissioning phase in 2020, uses a form of advanced recycling to turn hard-to-recycle mixed postconsumer and postindustrial plastic scrap into pyrolysis oil. According to court documents, the facility’s first sale of pyrolysis oil was in 2023, and it has the capacity to process 100,000 tons of plastic per year. Additionally, the court filings say the facility currently operates at about 5 percent of that nameplate capacity.

Brightmark says the Chapter 11 filing is specific to the Ashley facility and does not affect other parts of its business. The company says it continues to make progress on the development of its “state-of-the-art” Circularity Center in Thomaston, Georgia, which it announced in May 2024. As a next step in the development of the site, the company says it will complete the filings necessary for the facility’s air permit process.

When it announced the $950 million project in Thomaston last year, the company said the 2.5 million-square-foot facility would have the capacity to repurpose more than 400,000 tons of plastic per year and estimated it would bring about 200 jobs, improvements to regional infrastructure via a $20 million investment in various projects and support economic growth and development in rural West Central Georgia.

Additionally, Brightmark said at the time it planned to invest more than $1 million to enable a “zero liquid discharge” technology to ensure all process wastewater is managed and processed onsite, preventing any contact with the municipal water supply that includes drinking water, groundwater, the Flint River and other local waterways.

“We are optimistic about the future of the Thomaston facility and believe it will play a crucial role in our overall plastics business,” Powell says. “We look forward to our continued partnership with the Thomaston community.”