Norway's Quantafuel has outlined the economics behind its drive to capture a big slice of the multibillion-dollar waste plastics fuel conversion industry.

The Oslo-listed start-up, backed by trader Vitol and German chemicals giant BASF, believes it can make $50m per year from the biggest plants it plans to build to turn rubbish such as shopping bags into bunkers.

The test plant at Skive in Denmark has recently produced its first fuel, transforming the equivalent of 66,000 used bags into "high-quality liquids", the company said.