{"id":160618,"date":"2025-03-31T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=160618"},"modified":"2025-03-25T11:28:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T10:28:06","slug":"brightmark-subsidiary-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-seeks-asset-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/brightmark-subsidiary-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-seeks-asset-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Brightmark Subsidiary Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Seeks Asset Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Brightmark LLC\u00a0announced<\/a> that its subsidiaries operating a recycling facility in Ashley, IN, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the intention of selling their assets.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u00a9 Brightmark<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The San Francisco\u2013based company, which converts plastic waste into fuel, has filed motions to continue operations during the bankruptcy proceedings and to pursue an auction and sale process under Section 363 of the US Bankruptcy Code. Brightmark plans to provide continued financing to ensure its Ashley facility maintains sufficient liquidity for day-to-day operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Powell, Brightmark\u2019s founder and CEO, explained that the filing enables the company to take control of its future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This strategic move is designed to ensure the long-term viability of the Ashley facility and will allow us to grow our business sustainably,\u201d Powell said. \u201cWe are excited about the future of our plastics business, and our commitment to both the business and the Ashley community remains unwavering.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filing details<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to\u00a0Bloomberg, Brightmark’s bankruptcy filing, submitted on Sunday, lists assets and liabilities between $100 million and $500 million. The Indiana-based plant employs 113 people and has $172.5 million in outstanding municipal bonds. The filing follows Brightmark’s failure to make a $13 million debt payment that was due on March 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Court documents cited by Bloomberg reveal that Brightmark had invested more than $211 million in equity but determined it could not continue funding the project. The company’s bonds, issued in March 2019, last traded at approximately 16 cents on the dollar on Feb. 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brightmark emphasized that the bankruptcy filing applies only to the Ashley facility and does not affect other areas of its business. The company is continuing development of its planned Circularity Center in Thomaston, GA, which was announced in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the next development steps, Brightmark will complete the necessary filings for the air permit process for the Georgia facility. Last year, Powell told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Thomaston plant will not produce fuel or burn plastics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Georgia facility was announced, the company stated it would convert discarded plastic into materials used to create new circular plastic products, diverting waste from landfills, incinerators, and waterways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powell commented, “We are optimistic about the future of the Thomaston facility and believe it will play a crucial role in our overall plastics business. We look forward to our continued partnership with the Thomaston community.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brightmark’s technology reportedly repurposes existing material on a large scale, including hard-to-recycle plastics from industrial sites, manufacturing facilities, and schools. The company also partners with material recovery facilities (MRFs) to capture post-consumer plastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chemical recycling: Pros and cons<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite ongoing concerns about the economic viability and potential health and environmental risks of chemical recycling, the technology continues to advance in the United States and globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2024, Eastman<\/a> announced that it had been selected by the US Department of Energy<\/a> (DOE) to begin award negotiations for up to $375 million in funding. This announcement coincided with Eastman’s plan to build its second US molecular recycling facility in Longview, TX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eastman’s molecular recycling technology breaks down hard-to-recycle plastic waste into its molecular building blocks, which can then be reassembled into virgin-quality material without compromising performance. The company claims the process enables infinite reuse by keeping these molecules in production through a high-yield, material-to-material loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the process has its critics. In a 2024 column in\u00a0PlasticsToday, plastics industry veteran-turned-professor John Spevacek questioned the energy consumption required for chemical recycling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“From an energy perspective, the whole idea of taking plastics, breaking them down into their components, and then making the same plastics from them is fundamentally unsound,\u201d Spevacek wrote. \u201cThe polymerization and pyrolysis reactions are opposites of each other, and the second law of thermodynamics is clear that it will always take more energy to move in one direction than the other. You can’t go around this cycle without investing more energy each time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brightmark LLC\u00a0announced that its subsidiaries operating a recycling facility in Ashley, IN, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the intention of selling their assets. The San Francisco\u2013based company, which converts plastic waste into fuel, has filed motions to continue operations during the bankruptcy proceedings and to pursue an auction and sale process under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":160633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Plastic-to-fuel producer pivots strategy amid industry challenges and environmental debates","footnotes":""},"categories":[17143],"tags":[22872,10416,14462,10453],"supplier":[15172],"class_list":["post-160618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recycling","tag-advancedrecycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-plasticwaste","tag-recycling","supplier-brightmark-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160618"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=160618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}