Boretech receives positive Scientific Opinion from EFSA for its PET recycling technology
In November 2025, Boretech officially received a positive Scientific Opinion from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for its PET recycling process brtCOMBIPET. The evaluation was conducted in accordance with EU Regulation (EU) 2022/1616. With this opinion, Boretech’s process is among the PET mechanical recycling technologies that have been assessed and approved by EFSA for food-contact applications.
Since its formal implementation in September 2022, EU Regulation (EU) 2022/1616 has fundamentally reshaped the authorisation framework for food-grade plastic recycling. The new regulation shifts the focus of process safety assessment from recyclers to technology developers and raises requirements for cleaning efficiency and contaminant limits.
In response to the more stringent evaluation criteria, Boretech submitted data from challenge tests on its bottle-to-bottle recycling technology and thus demonstrated that its PET recycling process fully meets all the scientific requirements set by EFSA for a “high-efficiency decontamination process.” The EFSA expert panel identified extrusion, preheating and solid-state polycondensation (SSP) as critical steps in the Boretech process with regard to decontamination efficiency. According to the EFSA opinion, the recycled PET produced using this process may be used at up to 100% for the manufacture of food-contact materials for all types of food, including drinking water, under conditions of long-term storage at room or refrigerated temperatures, as well as under hot-fill conditions.
As per EU Regulation (EU) 2022/1616, the next step is for the European Commission to decide whether to grant authorisation for the decontamination process based on EFSA’s positive Scientific Opinion and allocate the Recycling Process Authorization Number, RAN, which the process developer can license to PET recyclers.