A SWINDON engineering firm working on a groundbreaking way of turning waste plastic into new material hopes to fundraise £40 million for it.

Recycling Technologies will go ahead with an initial public offering to raise the proceeds and trade on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange next month.

The engineering, research and manufacturing company developed a machine known as the RT7000 which turns hard-to-recycle plastic waste into an oil which can be sold as a chemical stock which can be turned into new plastics.

The small machine can be mass-produced and fit into existing waste management facilities which will then be able to recycle plastic waste anywhere in the world.

The company hopes to make plastic sustainable because only around 12 per cent of plastic waste is recycled each year and the other 88 per cent is buried in landfill, burned or leaked into the environment at a cost to the waste manager.

The RT7000 recycles plastic waste into Plaxx, a valuable chemical feedstock which can be used in the manufacture of new quality plastic as well as waxes and other chemicals.

Recycling Technologies has secured major industry and financial partners to provide third-party validation of the technology and business model and a spring-board for growth, including $40 billion petrochemicals company Neste, the Althelia Sustainable Oceans Fund, and consumer goods companies Mars, Nestle and Unilever.

The first commercial scale RT7000 will be located at Binn Eco Park in Scotland and will start work in December 2022, with more customers and projects in the pipeline, including a project in Indonesia, supported with funding for a feasibility study from the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, an alliance of more than 60 companies in the plastic value chain.

CEO Adrian Griffiths said: "“In our quest for a sustainable, low carbon existence, we will need plastic. It is typically a lower carbon alternative than other materials in many applications and so we need to quickly build capacity to recycle it, in a way which emits the least carbon.

"Recycling Technologies’ technology, built into the RT7000 machine, will be mass produced to provide such recycling capacity. Our innovative team and engineering expertise will provide a step change in the story of plastic. This fundraising is an important step in writing the next chapter.”