Viva Energy is strengthening Australia’s packaging resilience through local polymer manufacturing, advanced recycling and strategic partnerships centred on its Geelong Refinery. In collaboration with Nestlé, Alterra, Taghleef Industries and Amcor, Viva processed soft-plastics-derived pyrolysis oil into food-grade recycled polypropylene, enabling a Victorian supply chain to produce seven million KitKat wrappers. The proof-of-concept showed existing refinery infrastructure can support a circular plastics economy and reduce reliance on imported polymers.
Geelong already supplies around 30 per cent of local polypropylene demand. Viva is also working with Cleanaway on Cycleback Plastics, a proposed 50,000-tonne annual facility to convert Australian post-consumer soft plastics into refinery feedstock. The initiative could close a major plastics value-chain gap, retain valuable materials locally and improve sovereign manufacturing security, subject to supportive policy settings and investment certainty.
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