Clean-recycling company wins incentives offer to build Weld County plant

DENVER — The Colorado Economic Development Commission on Thursday approved a  tax-incentive package aimed at coaxing an unnamed clean-energy recycling company to build a waste-to-energy plant in Weld County.

The company, referred to in Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade documents as Project Molecule, uses a process called pyrolysis to “convert tires and rubber to diesel fuel, recycled carbon black and clean steel.”

It is the commission’s practice not to identify companies OEDIT is recruiting until incentives are accepted. 

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Project Molecule’s “technology will convert any type of recyclable and non-recyclable plastic material and uses a closed loop system with near zero emissions, creating a new source of energy and resource recovery with a low carbon footprint,” according to OEDIT.

The Weld County plant, which is expected to have an operating life of 25 years, will use inputs from tire manufacturers, mining companies and municipal landfills. The outputs would be sold to refineries, government agencies and tire manufacturers.

“Weld County (officials are) aware of this and they’re excited about the prospect of them coming,” OEDIT senior business development manager Mike Landes said during Thursday’s EDC meeting. “We’ve been in communication with (Northern Colorado economic development group) Upstate Colorado — they’re in on it and ready to support it.”

Neither the company nor OEDIT specified the projected capital investment Project Molecule’s Weld County plant would require, but members of the EDC called it “significant.”

In addition to Weld County, Project Molecule, which currently has no workers in Colorado, is considering Mississippi for its new plant.

Should Project Molecule move forward with its Colorado plant, the company expects to create 90 net new jobs at an average annual wage of $63,340, according to OEDIT. 

In exchange for the creation of these jobs, the EDC has offered $663,383 in performance-based tax incentives over an eight year period.

Greeley City Council is expected to review in the not-too-distant future a local incentives application for an unnamed company that appears to be the same firm that’s behind Project Molecule.

Project Energy, as Greeley documents refer to it, seeks $1.3 million in assistance to build a pyrolysis facility in Greeley adjacent to Andersen Sales and Salvage, 1490 E. Eighth St.

As part of the Greeley deal, the company agrees to:

• Buy the remaining portion of the Ironwood Business Park, about 12 acres.
• Develop a 20,000-square-foot municipal waste sorting/transfer station on the site at a cost of about $12 million. It would employ about 25 people.
• Develop speculative industrial space on the site at a cost of about $7.5 million.
• Provide household plastic waste to the pyrolysis plant. That plant would cost about $85 million, be 40,000 square feet and employ about 35 people.
• Donate land it owns in Greeley, about 8.77 acres, for open space, trails and parks.