Ahold Delhaize USA operating under numerous banners including Stop and Shop, Food Lion, Hannaford and Giant Food with 2,000 stores in 23 states, is cooperating with ExxonMobil, Cyclyx and Sealed Air on a program of recycling plastic food packaging.  The consortium has successfully completed pilot demonstrations to establish the feasibility of a circular food initiative involving collection from grocery stores. Processing of collected plastic will apply ExxonMobil Exxtend® technology to convert post-use material to food-grade packaging. 

Adam Springer, Manager for Product Sustainability at Ahold Delhaize commented, “Across our U.S. companies we have ambitious goals around recyclable and reusable packaging.” He added “Based on the initial pilot we’re optimistic about being able to leverage this process to additional cycles and look forward to exploring it further as part of this collaboration.”

Exxtend® technology degrades plastic waste into basic molecular components and produces a polymer with the critical performance attributes of virgin plastic.  The trial was conducted at a plant in Baytown, TX.

Cyclyx is a joint venture between Agilyx Corp and ExxonMobil and was responsible for sorting a pre-processing waste packaging material collected from Food Lion locations.

Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Cyclyx stated, “The interface between the Food Lion stores and the Baytown, TX facility was critical and required an innovative approach to feed stock management.”  He added, “Part of our process is to identify the chemical composition of the waste plastics we receive, allowing us to create custom blends of post-used plastic feed stock.”

Sealed Air converted the polymer into food-grade flexible film used to wrap a branded fresh poultry product.

ExxonMobil intends to expand recycling capacity to 500,000 metric tons of plastic by the end of 2026 in a number of locations worldwide.