Nexam vs. Polykemi

Polykemi is the company a Nexam Chemical shareholder should understand best, because it is not a competitor at all. It is the archetype of the customer.

What Polykemi is

A family-owned compounder in Ystad, founded in 1968 and now in the third generation, making custom plastic compounds from virgin and recycled raw material. It runs five production units on three continents: two in Ystad, one in Gastonia in North Carolina, and two in China, in Kunshan and Chongqing. Its subsidiary Rondo Plast sorts, grinds and regranulates end-of-life plastic; another, Scanfill, makes thermoforming film. It does not publish revenue or headcount on its site.

Its recycled compound programme has two brands: REPRO, a standard black series of PP, ABS, PA6, PA66 and PC/ABS with up to 100% recycled content, and REZYcom, a customised series that can be colored. Both use industrial and post-consumer material.

Where they do not compete

Polykemi buys additives; it does not make them. Its own description of how a recycled compound is made is the clearest statement of the relationship: the recycled material is adapted with reinforcements, additives and color, with virgin material added if the product requires it.

That sentence is the whole of the commercial logic. A compounder's job is to hit a customer's specification with whatever combination of feedstock and additive is cheapest and most reliable. An additive supplier sells into that decision, and loses when virgin dilution is cheaper than chemistry.

Every argument Nexam makes about restoring performance in recycled material is an argument aimed at a company like Polykemi, whose alternative is simply adding more virgin resin.

Where the tension is

Compounders have in-house formulation expertise and long-standing supplier relationships, and they are price-sensitive on additives in a way a brand owner is not. They can also achieve some of the same result by blending: mixing a degraded stream with virgin, or with a better recycled stream, changes the average without any chemistry.

The case for the additive is that blending costs recycled content, which is exactly what the customer now has to report and, from 2030, has to reach by law. When recycled content is a regulated minimum rather than a preference, diluting with virgin stops being a free option, and the additive competes against a smaller set of alternatives.

What to watch

Whether compounders name their additive suppliers, and whether any of them publish trial data. Polykemi certifies to ISCC PLUS for mass-balance material and publishes a carbon tool for its compounds, which shows a company willing to document what it sells. Documentation of additive performance would be the equivalent step on the other side of the relationship, and nobody in this market has taken it yet.

Sources

• Polykemi, about, group, recycled materials and sustainability. The site is in Swedish.
• Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 7, for the recycled content minimums.

Independent research, not affiliated with either company and not investment advice.