Ingka Investments Backs China's Remo to Expand Food Grade Plastic Recycling

New funding targets a shortage of recycled packaging materials

Remo Environmental Protection, a Chinese recycler founded in 2015, has secured financing led by Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, the largest IKEA retailer. Japanese materials company Asahi Kasei is continuing its support. The funding will help Remo expand production capacity, improve its technology and enter more overseas markets where brands need reliable supplies of recycled plastic suitable for food packaging.

Remo focuses mainly on polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE), two plastics found in everyday packaging. Takeout containers, films, rigid trays, snack wrappers and packaging made from multiple layers form part of the wider waste problem the company is addressing. These products are convenient while in use, but recovering useful material from them can be difficult once they contain food residue or become mixed with other waste.

The company says it can turn common packaging waste into recycled pellets with performance matching virgin plastic, meaning plastic made from new raw materials. Those pellets are the small pieces manufacturers melt and shape into finished products. Remo reports that its materials have passed food contact safety testing, including what it describes as U.S. Food and Drug Administration certification.

Remo already supplies customers in Europe, the United States and Japan. It plans to establish overseas branches to work more closely with customers and regulators. Food trays, caps, closures and the inner layers of flexible packaging are among the potential uses for its materials.

As of September 27, 2025, the investment amount, the size of the planned capacity increase and dates for opening overseas branches were not given. The commercial goal is to address a worldwide shortage of food grade recycled PP and PE as consumer brands seek more recycled content and regulators demand better quality and traceability.

How Remo turns discarded plastic into usable pellets

Remo uses physical, or mechanical, recycling. This approach sorts, cleans and melts existing plastic instead of breaking it down into chemical building blocks. The aim is to remove unwanted substances and keep the polymer, the material that makes up the plastic, stable enough to behave like new resin during manufacturing and everyday use.

PP and PE belong to a family of plastics called polyolefins. Remo mainly sources waste packaging made from these materials, including takeout containers, film and rigid trays. Food residue, dyes, labels and other additives make the incoming waste difficult to process. A usable batch therefore depends on control from the arrival of discarded packaging to the testing of finished pellets.

Remo uses automated sorting capable of distinguishing different polymers and grades of PP and PE. Advanced recycling plants typically use near infrared sensors and computer vision to separate plastics by type and colour. Near infrared sensors help identify materials through their response to light, while computer vision helps machines recognise visible differences.

Deep cleaning follows sorting. This stage removes food residue, inks and odours. Melt filtration then screens fine particles out of the plastic while it is melted and extruded, or pushed through processing equipment to form a new material. Each stage has a different job: sorting separates materials, washing removes contamination, and filtration catches particles left in the melted plastic.

Remo also describes a digital quality traceability system linking incoming batches of waste with lots of finished pellets. That connection allows customers to document compliance and helps identify where a defect entered production. Cleaning the material and keeping a record of its journey are both central to supplying buyers that need consistent results.

What food contact safety requires

Food packaging demands tighter controls than many other plastic products. Recycled material must keep contaminants below strict thresholds, and the recycling process needs safeguards that stop unknown substances entering the production stream. A tray or closure that comes into contact with food must satisfy safety requirements as well as perform properly.

Remo reports that its recycled PP and PE have passed U.S. FDA food contact certification. The company also cites compliance with European restrictions on hazardous substances, known as RoHS. Those restrictions are often relevant to electronics and toys, where materials face limits on heavy metals and certain flame retardants.

Food contact controls and chemical safety requirements serve different product needs. A packaging manufacturer needs material suited to the intended contact with food, while a maker of toys or electronic equipment may need evidence that restricted substances stay within permitted limits. Remo is targeting customers across these demanding uses.

Poorly processed recycled plastic can contain impurities that weaken its performance and cause it to shed microplastics faster during use. Better sorting and filtration, supported by repeatable purity testing, can help produce materials that last longer, meet safety rules and release fewer unwanted fragments into the environment.

Food contact approvals are specific to the recycling process. Maintaining them requires close control of equipment, input sources and operating settings, with repeat testing when those conditions change. Expansion into another region can also bring local regulatory requirements and customer audits, making quality management part of the expansion itself.

Why China's packaging waste is central to the opportunity

China produces a large stream of plastic packaging waste from takeout meals, online shopping and consumer goods. After the country restricted imports of foreign waste several years ago, attention shifted toward processing domestic waste to higher standards.

China's recycling industry has long been fragmented, with many small operators and uneven material quality. That makes it harder for manufacturers to use recycled plastic in products requiring predictable performance and certification. A factory needs to know how a material will behave each time it enters a production line.

Remo is trying to address that problem through a connected production system built around quality and traceability. The company seeks to manage the whole journey from waste sourcing to finished pellets, rather than treating collection, cleaning and material quality as disconnected tasks.

Industry forecasts cited in the September 2025 account put the potential value of recycled plastic products at around $174 billion by 2030, with China expected to account for a large share. The opportunity depends on turning waste into material that buyers can repeatedly use in demanding applications.

Brands need high quality recycled PP and PE to meet public commitments and comply with rules in the markets where they sell goods. For China, that creates a route from its domestic packaging waste to customers abroad, provided recyclers can maintain the necessary safety standards and dependable output.

Regulation and brand commitments are increasing demand

The European Union requires minimum recycled content in beverage bottles and, as described in the September 2025 account, is debating broader packaging content rules for 2030. Several U.S. states have also introduced recycled content requirements or extended producer responsibility requirements.

Extended producer responsibility means producers take responsibility for managing products or packaging after consumers discard them. Alongside rules requiring recycled material, these policies put more attention on what happens to packaging after its first use.

IKEA, beverage companies and apparel makers have public goals to increase recycled content across product lines. Regulation and corporate commitments together are pushing demand toward recycled materials with verified quality that can be used in food packaging, toys, electronics housings and automotive parts.

Food grade recycled PP and PE remain in tight supply worldwide. Brands seeking these materials need enough volume to support regular production, along with the documentation and testing required for each application. Remo's expansion is aimed at serving that combination of demand for quantity, consistency and safety.

For consumers, the practical change would be packaging that can return to a demanding use after being discarded, rather than being used once and then lost as waste. That circular use depends on collection, processing and manufacturing working together.

Why Ingka and Asahi Kasei are backing the expansion

Ingka Investments brings capital and a signal that major retailers want dependable access to high quality recycled materials. Ingka Group has made circular production and materials a core part of its climate and resource strategy. Circular production aims to keep materials in use through repeated cycles of making, using and recycling products.

Asahi Kasei, a Japanese chemicals and materials group, brings experience in plastics and advanced filtration technologies. Its continued support accompanies the financing led by Ingka Investments as Remo seeks to expand its production and international business.

Lukas Visser, head of circular investments at Ingka Group, described the investment as a way to extend its impact and help change how plastic waste is managed.

We hope to further expand this influence through this investment, help solve the global plastic waste problem, and promote the transformation to a circular economy.

Pontus Erntell, president and chief sustainability officer of IKEA China, placed the investment within a longer effort to build circular systems beyond IKEA's own operations.

To continuously meet the needs of current and future generations of consumers, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to lead the accelerated transformation of the circular economy outside the IKEA system.

Investors see a large potential market, increasing policy pressure to use recycled content and a shortage of food grade recycled polyolefins. Brands are looking for supply security, verified quality and a way to meet public commitments while maintaining product performance and safety.

Where the recycled materials can be used

Packaging applications for high quality recycled PP and PE include food trays, closures, films and protective caps. Remo also identifies the inner layers of flexible packaging as a potential use. These applications require material that can be processed reliably and meet the rules governing its intended use.

Consumer goods offer another market. Recycled polyolefins can replace virgin resin in storage boxes, toys and household items. In vehicles, recycled PP is commonly used in interior trim, battery trays and components under the hood, where resistance to heat and impact matters.

Some textile applications also use PP fibres, including nonwoven materials and performance fabrics. The range of possible products gives recyclers several markets to serve, although each application has its own performance and safety requirements.

Manufacturing consistency is crucial across those uses. When a recycled pellet melts, flows and cools like virgin resin, injection moulding and extrusion equipment can operate without changes. That can reduce production downtime and scrap, the material discarded during manufacturing.

Materials that also satisfy food contact and chemical safety requirements can return to products with greater value instead of being limited to less demanding uses. Remo's commercial pitch rests on providing that combination of reliable processing and verified quality.

Traceability connects buyers to the waste stream

Buyers want to know where recycled material came from, how it was processed and which tests support each batch. Remo says its digital quality traceability system maps feedstock sources to output lots. Feedstock is the waste material a recycler takes in; an output lot is a batch of finished material supplied to a customer.

Keeping those records can help identify problems early, make audits faster and support customers' requirements for compliance and safety documentation. If a batch has a defect, the records can help trace the issue back through production and to the incoming material.

Packaging design also affects what recycling plants can recover. Using fewer colours, choosing compatible labels and adhesives, and making packaging from a single material can improve yields and produce cleaner material streams. Yield means the amount of useful recycled material recovered from the waste entering a plant.

Data from traceability systems can help brands make those design choices. Records showing which contaminants or packaging formats cause the most lost value can guide changes before the next product reaches consumers. Quality control can therefore influence both recycling operations and the design of future packaging.

Collection gaps and costs remain practical constraints

Reliable supplies of suitable waste are essential to Remo's plans. Many cities still lack dependable collection of plastic packaging, particularly films and flexible materials. Even where collection exists, food residue, labels and mixed materials can reduce the amount of usable plastic recovered.

Consistent supplies of clean PP and PE waste are difficult to secure. Prices for that waste can also rise sharply as demand grows. A recycler needs enough material to keep its equipment running while maintaining the quality required for its finished pellets.

High quality mechanical recycling requires investment in sorting, washing, odour removal and advanced filtration, as well as continuous testing. These costs create pressure when oil prices fall and newly made plastic becomes cheaper than recycled resin.

Stable policy signals and purchase agreements lasting several years can help reduce those swings by giving recyclers more predictable demand. Remo's expansion will also depend on partnerships with waste collectors, packaging manufacturers and brand owners, alongside engineering and consistent quality management.

Building facilities closer to collection points and customers can reduce logistics costs, speed up approvals and make compliance with local recycled content rules easier. Many buyers favour local or regional sourcing for traceability, risk management and lower transport emissions.

Expansion will test consistency at greater scale

Remo plans to increase capacity in China and establish branches in key overseas markets. Its existing customers in Europe, the United States and Japan provide a starting point for serving global manufacturers more closely.

The next commercial opportunities include supply contracts with consumer brands, packaging converters and automotive suppliers that need certified materials. Packaging converters are manufacturers that turn plastic resin or film into finished packaging. Further spending on sorting and decontamination technology is likely as Remo pursues more food contact applications and tighter consistency between batches.

Partnerships with municipal waste programmes and large private collectors could improve both the quality and volume of incoming waste. Those relationships matter because a larger production plant still needs a dependable stream of suitable material.

PET, the plastic widely associated with beverage bottles, has a head start in food contact recycling through relatively mature systems that turn used bottles into new bottles. PP and PE come in a wider variety of forms and uses, making collection and decontamination more complex.

Remo's investment places it in the effort to produce food grade recycled PP at industrial scale. Its central task is to deliver predictable output from varied packaging waste while maintaining safety and performance. Success would give manufacturers more scope to return polyolefins to demanding products through repeated use.

Key Points

• Remo Environmental Protection, founded in 2015, secured funding led by Ingka Investments with continued support from Asahi Kasei.
• The financing targets greater production capacity, better technology and expansion into overseas markets.
• Remo uses sorting, deep cleaning and melt filtration to produce recycled PP and PE that it says match virgin plastic performance.
• The company reports U.S. FDA food contact certification, RoHS compliance and digital tracking from incoming waste to finished pellets.
• Customers already include buyers in Europe, the United States and Japan, with overseas branches planned.
• Packaging, toys, household goods, automotive parts and some textiles are potential markets for high quality recycled polyolefins.
• Collection gaps, contamination, costs and approvals remain central challenges as demand for food grade recycled plastic grows.