Purcom, a Brazilian polyurethane systems house founded in 2002 and headquartered in Barueri, São Paulo state, will start up a chemical recycling plant in January 2027 producing 1,200 tonnes a year of recycled polyol. The initial feedstock is rigid polyurethane foam recovered from end-of-life refrigerators, with flexible foam from mattresses and automotive seating still under development. The recycled polyol is aimed back at refrigerator insulation, and the company is targeting a tenfold capacity increase by 2028. Founder and chief executive Giuseppe Santanchè announced the investment at the PU do Futuro Summit in São Paulo.
Purcom describes itself as Latin America's largest independent polyurethane systems house, and that is what makes the announcement unusual: the investment in recycling capacity comes from a formulator rather than from a raw-material major. The starting volume is deliberately modest. At 1,200 tonnes a year the plant is a reference point for what scale is realistic to begin with rather than a supply solution, with the tenfold step targeted for 2028.
The more instructive part of the announcement is what sits around the plant. Purcom runs a collection and sorting platform called Purcom Ecos and a digital traceability system, Econexão, that tracks material through its reverse-logistics network; the company says that network was built up over the past ten years. The sequencing says something about where the difficulty in polyurethane recycling actually lies. Assembling a clean, sorted and documented stream of end-of-life foam takes longer to build than the chemistry takes to solve.
The feedstock starts with rigid foam recovered from scrapped refrigerators, and flexible foam from mattresses and automotive seating is described as in development on the feedstock side. The source does not name the process used by the new plant beyond chemical recycling. Glycolysis appears only in connection with an earlier industrial trial the company ran with Electrolux, in which waste refrigerator foam was broken down by glycolysis and converted into a recycled polyol before being incorporated into a formulated polyol system.
For a systems producer or a rigid-foam buyer, the point is the shape of the loop: refrigerator foam going back into refrigerator insulation, handled by the same kind of company that formulates the original system. It also sets a realistic expectation of what early recycled-polyol supply looks like: small volumes, allocated rather than freely traded, and tied to one specific collection network. The open question in any market where recycled-content requirements are arriving is who ends up owning the take-back stream: the appliance and panel producers that generate the scrap, the recyclers, or the system houses that want the polyol back.