Brightlands creates a demo facility for circular plastics
Brightlands Circular Space in Geleen, the Netherlands, focuses on an integrated approach to the entire plastic value chain.
Published on May 24, 2025
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Construction started last week on the Brightlands Chemelot campus in Geleen on Brightlands Circular Space, a demonstration facility that aims to accelerate the transition to circular plastics. This innovation hub for the plastics of the future is an initiative of Brightlands Chemelot Campus, Maastricht University, and TNO. The world's first fully circular and open-access demonstration facility for plastics is scheduled for completion in 2026.
Although the traditional way of making plastic is vital for many products, there are various reasons why we need to move quickly towards a circular future. Brightlands Circular Space aims to help producers, recyclers, designers, and researchers find solutions for the future. Brightlands Circular Space focuses on the entire plastics chain: from production and use to reuse and recycling.
Brightlands Circular Space aims to become an international hub where companies, knowledge institutions, policymakers, and designers collaborate on sustainable innovations with plastics, from packaging to applications in cars, textiles, and electronics. “The facility will be open to the public and will offer space to develop new knowledge, test technologies, create products, generate new jobs, and try out new business models and collaborations,” the initiators write in a statement. “In this way, Brightlands Circular Space helps parties to innovate faster, bring new solutions to market more quickly, and reduce risks.”
“More than a circular demonstrator”
Lia Voermans, chair of the Brightlands Circular Space Steering Committee, says about constructing the demonstrator: "We are building a unique project for the plastic value chain, but in fact, we are building a place that is more than just a circular demonstrator. We are building a new story, showing that circular plastics are not just ideal on paper, but also have a real place in our shared future. We are convinced that with this demonstrator, we have something special that can change the world of plastics."
The demonstration facility will consist of four interrelated components:
- Circular House: a makerspace and meeting place for co-creation, material analysis, business models, and valorization of circular innovations.
- Polymer Processing Facility: focused on process optimization, new polymers, and product testing.
- Plastic Waste Preprocessing Facility: for high-quality preprocessing of plastic waste and better quality recyclate.
- Process Module (Skid), Pilot, and Demonstration Facility: where new technologies and processes can be scaled up.
Public-private partnership
The construction of Brightlands Circular Space is made possible partly by investments from the founding partners, funding from the National Growth Fund through the Circular Plastics NL program, and the European Just Transition Fund. BAM is responsible for the construction, and the design is in the hands of the architectural firm Broekbakema.