May 2011 Archives

Hope the blog's US readers had a great Memorial Day weekend!

So here are last week's big news that came out such as Solazyme's successful IPO and Novamont to build a biorefinery/bioplastic in Italy. I also just finished writing an article about Dow Chemical's successful pilot project on incinerating plastics for energy. This article will come out next week Monday on ICIS Chemical Business.

But let's start today with Myriant's big announcement on its filing for its own IPO.

The US-based bio-succinic acid producer filed its S-1 form with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today for a proposed $125m IPO under NASDAQ (symbol "MYRT") . The filing did not disclose how many shares the company plans to sell or the expected price of each share.

Of course, the blog always gets lots of good information on S-1. I also forgot that Myriant's licensee Purac is already producing D-lactic acid in Spain using Myriant's anaerobic fermentation process. Other recent partners announced include Davy Process Technologies for the production of succinic acid-based butanediol (BDO); and PTT Chemical for R&D collaboration as well as commercialization of Myriant's technology exclusively within the ASEAN countries.

The company said it's technology platform (combination of proprietary biocatalysts and fermentation process) can produce chemical intermediates such as succinic acid (a $7.5bn global market), fumaric acid ($1.7bn market), acrylic acid ($14.5bn market) and lactic acid (forecast to become a multi-billion pound market) using C5 and C6 sugars. Aside from BDO, Myriant is also looking at petroleum-based adipic acid and phthalic anhydride where succinic acid can be a drop-in or a replacement chemical.

Myriant, which is currently building its 30m lb/year bio-succinic acid plant in Louisiana, estimates that their biosuccinic acid will be cost-competitive with petroleum-based processes at $45/bbl of oil. The plant is expected to start in the first quarter of 2013. Myriant said the company plans to expand production to 170m lbs/year by the end of first quarter of 2014 (that's news to me!). Also, the company is in the early stages of planning other production facilities in Germany and Asia.

"We have already scaled up our biosuccinic acid production 1,000 fold at the tolling plant owned by Fermic, S.A. de C.V., or Fermic, in Mexico City and have produced 24 tonnes of biosuccinic acid at this facility in support of internal testing and customer/vendor sampling and validation programs. The commercial scale-up of the Louisiana Plant represents a two fold scale-up of the fermentation already commercialized by Purac in the production of D(−) lactic acid based on our technology platform." - Myriant

Another news to me is the memorandum of agreement with China National BlueStar Co. Ltd to develop a proposed jointly-owned 220m lb/year bio-succinic acid plant in Nanjing, China, and an agreement for exclusive supply of bio-suiccinic acid to BlueStar. The Chinese company is a BDO licensee of Davy.

To date, the company has not yet generated any significant product sales. Most of the revenues came from licensing royalties and government awards. The company reported a loss of $17.5m for the first quarter this year ending March 31. Myriant, however, expects its incoming succinic acid capacity in Louisiana to be "prospectively" sold out annually via committed customer contracts.

"We have signed contracts with three customers who have agreed to buy 100% of their succinic acid requirements from our 30 million pound Louisiana Plant. We are in discussions with prospective customers who have indicated interest in purchasing the biosuccinic acid that we would produce from the additional capacity created upon the expansion of the Louisiana Plant to 170 million pounds. "

This is also the first time I've heard that there will be ammonium sulfate (AMS) co-product in Myriant's bio-succinic acid manufacturing process. The company said it has entered into a contract with Wilson Industrial Sales to sell all of the AMS produced at the Louisiana plant. AMS is commonly used as a fertilizer.

With regards to feedstock, Myriant said it will transition to widely available, low-cost industrial sugars such as 95 Dextrose after completing start-up and operational trials on sorghum-based sugars at the Louisiana Plant. This sugar is derived from corn not sold for human consumption. Myriant said the sugar represents a more dependable and less cost-volatile feedstock than that used in other biobased production facilities.

And last but not the least, we also have to mention competitors in the bio-succinic acid market such as BioAmber, DSM (through joint venture with Roquette), and BASF. Myriant will also compete with Genomatica for BDO.

US-based Zeachem, which is building a 250,000 gal/year cellulosic demonstration biorefinery in Boardman, Oregon, producing ethanol and ethyl acetate, announced last week that it will be able to soon get 100% of its  feedstock at a cost 50% lower compared to Brazilian sugarcane and 80% less compared to corn-based materials.

The company has signed a long-term deal with GreenWood Tree Farm Fund (GTFF) managed by GreenWood Resources to supply hybrid poplar woody biomass for source of fermentable sugars at Zeachem's planned 25m gal/year commercial biorefinery which will also be located in Boardman, Oregon. No other details on the planned commercial biorefinery were disclosed. I guess construction will start as soon as the demo facility's operations will be successful.

ZeaChem's demonstration plant in Boardman, Ore. will begin to come online this year.

Zeachem said its feedstock supply will come from a portion of GTFF's residual fiber and local agricultural residue suppliers. GTFF will be the primary feedstock supplier for Zeachem's first biorefinery. GTFF already has a hybrid poplar tree plantation near Boardman, which will supply feedstock to the demo facility, which will therefore lowers transportation and logistics costs.

[Photo of hybrid poplar tree farm by GreenWood Resources]

Here are more recent announcements from Elevance.

The blog might have already mentioned Elevance's announcement to collaborate with DSM on bio-based high performance specialty thermoplastics. Not much details were shared on what type of thermoplastics they're focusing on and in what applications they're looking into.

DSM is pretty big in the engineering plastics market especially with polyamides, polyesters and thermoplastic copolyesters. Worldwide, the company claimed to be #1 in high temperature polyamides, #2 in polyamide 6m #2 in thermoplastic copolyesters and #3 in overall semi-crystalline engineering plastics.

According to the press release, Elevance will provide natural monomers from plant oils using its metathesis technology to produce various polymers. As the blog recalls, Elevance is already producing C18 dibasic esters and acids, and 9-octadecenedioic acid methyl ester in particular can be a platform for producing specialty polyesters and nylons.

In a more recent press release, Elevance also announced that it has completed a 1m pound/year (500 tonne/year) production run of renewable-based specialty chemicals at toll manufacturing facilities located across the US, compared to a previous 40,000 lb/year (20 tonne/year) production runs. The company has already begun shipping products to customers from the manufacturing facilities.

By the way, Elevance's Andy Shafer recently gave a presentation at the ICIS 1st Surfactants conference held in may 12-13, and Shafer noted that the company has two manufacturing models: a large-scale, low capital biorefinery platform such as the one they are building in partnership with Wilmar in Indonesia, which is expected to start-up in the fourth quarter this year; and on-purpose, capital light platform via contract and batch manufacturing options.

I believe Shafer said at the conference that Elevance plans to scale-up to a billion gallon capacity across the globe (4 assets in Asia, 3 in North America and 3 in South America) by 2019. Based on some of the recent partnership announcements the company made this year alone -- Stepan on surfactants, DSM on bioplastics, NL Grease on lubricants, International Specialty Products (ISP) on waxes and derivatives, and its first partner Dow Corning on cosmetic waxes -- they probably need all that 1m pound output and the incoming 180,000 tonne/year production in Indonesia (expandable to 360,000 tonne/year).

For the toll manufacturing locations here in the US, these will produce alpha olefins and novel esters for applications such as surfactants, personal care ingredients, and lubricants and additives. According to Shafer, the renewable olefins produced will enable the replacement of n-paraffins which are used in making linear alkylbenzene (LAB) and linear alkylbenzene sulfonates (LABS) surfactants.

Is the global bioplastic industry already benefiting from plastic bag ban in Italy? US-based Cereplast thinks so as it currently goes through its construction plans of a 100,000 tonne/year bioplastic facility in Assissi (Cannara), Italy.

"After exploring possible sites in several countries in Europe, we identified a central location in Italy, where we have established several strong distribution relationships. In addition, the Italian government has expressed its strong support for the development and use of bioplastics, therefore it was the obvious location choice for our plant." - Frederic Scheer, Cereplast CEO.

According to Scheer, 85% of their business is already based in Europe, where bioplastic demand is expected to reach 1m tons by 2014. The European bioplastics market is growing by 15-20%/year according to the European Bioplastic Association.

Cereplast's plant will be financed through local and regional financing with Italian institutions and is expected to receive subsidies from various state and local agencies. The initial investment is estimated to be about €10 million to €12 million. In the company's recent earnings call, Scheer noted that Cereplast is continuing to benefit from plastic bag ban legislation such as in Italy, where it came into effect on January 1 this year.

According to an article from ICIS, the Italian plastic bag industry uses between 200,000 and 250,000 tonnes/year of polyethylene (PE), low density PE (LLDPE), high density PE (HDPE) and linear low density PE (LLDPE). The article also compared lower plastic bag demand in Ireland and France following similar legal measures. (Ireland placed taxes on single-use plastic bags since 2002).

I don't know if the plastic bag bans contribute to several other recent bioplastic investment activities announced for Italy or is it because there are already nice plastic manufacturing infrastructure there as well as good feedstock sourcing --or maybe combination of all of the above.

One is the announcement from DSM, in partnership with Roquette, who plans to open a commercial-scale 10,000 tons/year bio-succinic acid plant in Cassano Spinola, Italy, by the second half of 2012. For those who are not familiar with succinic acid, it is a chemical building block for the manufacture of a lot of products but its use for polymers production seem to be standing out more often. The joint venture said they will focus on new applications for succinic acid in materials such as polybutylene succinate (Pbs) and 1,4 butanediol (BDO).

My colleague Anna Jagger actually wrote a more comprehensive article about the announcement for ICIS Chemical Business (subcription only for this one - sorry...). DSM and Roquette said they will consider building a larger facility in the future if demand for ­biosuccinic acid develops in line with expectations.

I asked DSM why Italy. Here's their answer:

"We investigated multiple global options and used several criteria to make the selection. We looked at the market, sustainability, production costs, availability of feedstocks (integration in an existing biorefinery). We also realized that this is our first production plant, that is a step in our strategy to a larger production facility. Cassano is also a site that is experienced in the fermentative production of e.g. gluconic acid."

Another announcement was from US-based Genomatica, which is planning to build a cellulosic-based bio-BDO demonstration facility in Rivalta, Italy, in collaboration with engineering firm Chemtex, a subsidiary of Italian plastic producer M&G (Gruppo Mossi & Ghisolfi). Genomatica declined to indicate how much capacity the bio-BDO plant will be although it said that it will immediately move to commercial scale of around 45,000 tonnes/year once the demo has been successfully run, which is expected to be the first half of 2012.

The plant will use a variety of biomass feedstock including energy crops like arundo donax and sorghum; agricultural residues like sugarcane bagasse or wheat and rice straws; and poplar or eucalyptus wood.

Why Italy? "We are locating this facility in Italy because of the proven pilot scale production of PROESA, coupled with M&G's construction of the largest cellulosic ethanol plant in the world at Crescentino" - Genomatica

The company said they have not yet announced specific distribution for their bio-BDO but have seen very strong demand for bio-based sustainable chemicals in the European market.

Last but not the least, Italian bioplastic producer Novamont said late last year that they are planning to expand their biopolymer production capacity from 80,000 tonnes/year to 150,000 tonnes/year by the end of 2012 or early 2013. Novamont did not disclose the new plant's location in Italy.

Novamont said sales from their biopolymers has increased 20-30% every year for the past few years.

[Photo by Fashionblabla]

Okay, I am back. Sorry for the long hiatus and right now I also have a article deadline this Friday because of the incoming Memorial Weekend so I'll try as best as I can to put up some posts from my growing draft list.

First, a peek of my participation at a Bioeconomy panel discussion at the Helsinki Chemicals Forum held last week. Thanks to my ICIS colleague Franco Capaldo who took this video. I was actually afraid of watching this but I guess I did alright (not sure if I will do this again as my stomach can't take the stress!)

In this link are some of the highlights of the two-day event taken by the Forum's own reporters.

I was also tweeting the first panel discussion about Sustainable Chemistry. Here are some of the more interesting comments that I noted:

• First panelists at #HCF2011 talking about sustainable chemistry

• Cefic's Hubert Mandery moderating the first panel. Opening comments by Kemira CEO Harri Kerminen, who noted that sustainability for the company is all about facing challenges about growing population, megacities, depleting resources as well as clean water resources. Kerminen pointed out that global population at 2050 will be 9.2bn (up 33%) from 6.9bn in 2010. This means lots of business opportunities.
  

• For Kemira, sustainable chemistry is about the design, manufacture and use of efficient, effective, safe and more environmental benign chemical products and technologies. The company is big on water treatment chemicals and technologies by the way. According to Keminen, water treatment technologies will be desperately needed to fill 40% gap of water demand vs supply by 2030. Most of the water demand will be coming from Asia primarily from agriculture, industrial and municipal growth.
  

• Keminen noted that companies have to be practical as well when it comes to sustainability. "Sustainable Chemistry products must also be competitive and financially sustainable."
  

• A list of the top trends for chemicals to 2020 was shown by Kemira.  At the #1 spot was using biobased feedstocks. Others on the list include enabling low carbon technologies; improving safety and security; globalizing regulations; consumers and developing economies; use of global communications; growth in intelligence solutions; globalizing competition; new technologies needing new materials; and waste reduction.


• European companies, according to Keminen, are responding to sustainability challenges by focusing on sustainability sectors such as water or biofuels; boosting R&D through partnerships especially funded programs such as SusChem, LRI programs of CEFIC; and focusing on their own strategies such as energy and resource efficiency in their own operations. Of course he also mentioned that chemical legislations such as Reach has to be developed carefully in order to support a financially-stable sustainable chemistry. A sustainable domestic chemical market in Europe has to be competitive with other markets around the world where their definition of sustainability might be different.

• Kemira's overall message: Sustainable Chemistry is an enormous business opportunity for the chemical industry; Chemicals are the key solution in many emerging technologies in sustainable development; How can companies and the public sector build competitive edge from sustainable chemistry within the EU?

Here's a very interesting presentation from Rodney Townsend, key speaker at the second panel discussion where I participated. According to Townsend, one-third of chemicals and materials by 2030 will be produced from biological sources. The global chemical market by 2020 is expected at $250bn.

The blog will be on hiatus for 1.5 weeks as the green blogger attends the Helsinki Chemicals Forum this week as well as prepares for her final exam on May 24.

There have been a couple of big news the past week such as DSM's announcement of the construction of their commercial bio-succinic acid plant with Roquette; Verdezyne hooking up with BP and DSM on their recent financing round; Singapore-based oleochemical company Wilmar building a natural fatty alcohol plant in Europe in partnership with chemical company Huntsman; Metabolix receiving $6m grant from the DOE for a project aimed at increasing fuel and chemical yields from bio-based products made from switchgrass; another announcement (currently embargoed) coming in this Tuesday; and more announcements below.

I will try to expand on some of them in another post when the blog comes back as well as start writing some overview from the very successful ICIS 1st surfactant conference.

Carbon dioxide supplier Linde Group and algae developer Sapphire Energy have entered a multi-year development deal for a low-cost system to deliver carbon dioxide to commercial-scale, open-pond algae-to-fuel cultivation systems. A single commercial algae-fuel production facility is estimated to require 10,000 tonnes/day of CO2, which is comparable to 30% of the current merchant market for CO2 in the U.S.

Elevance and DSM have signed a letter of intent for a collaboration to evaluate Elevance's monomers for production of specialty bio-based high performance thermoplastic materials for DSM's engineering plastics portfolio. Elevance will provide natural monomers from plant oils.

Dow and PolyOne in PLA additives
Dow Chemical's Plastics Additives business teamed up with PolyOne to introduce OnCap BIO L masterbatches based on Dow's PARALOID BMP-520, a new generation of impact modifier that helps improve impact resistance of opaque, injection-molded polylactic acid (PLA) products with minimal effect on heat distortion temperature and stiffness.

Ashland Hercules Water Technologies has introduced PTV M-5309, a new corn oil extraction aid from ethanol production. The product significantly increases corn oil yield up to three times more corn oil by improving the release of oil during mechanical extraction.

GreenField Ethanol launched G2Biochem, a collaborative partnership that will acquire, validate and commercialize GreenField's patented next-generation ethanol process technology using variety of biomass such as agricultural residues, energy crops and woody biomass. G2Biochem is backed by major international partners & collaborators including Andritz and Novozymes.


INSIGHT: Is bio-based BDO for real?

US producer Eastman Chemicals has doubled its capacity for its Tritan copolyester, producing 60,000 tonnes/year for 2012.

Brazil-based FCC introduced a thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) that is based on feedstock from plants.

New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL) and Wilmar International have agreed to supply Continental Europe with fully segregated sustainable palm oil from NBPOL's plantations in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands by the middle of next year.

This is already a two-week old news but I believe still worth mentioning. US agribusiness major Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) said its 100,000 tonne/year bio-based propylene glycol (PG) plant in Decatur, Illinois, had a successful start-up and is now producing industrial-grade PG using refined glycerin as feedstock.

The facility's operations started-up in late March and over the next few months, ADM will ramp up the plant's production capacity and work toward adding production of propylene glycol which meets USP specifications.

By the way, ADM also has the capability to manufacture PG from sorbitol, a corn-derived sugar alcohol.

ADM said it has performed a lifecycle analysis (LCA) on its bio-PG and reported that its product has an 80% reduction in GHG emission compared to traditional PG. ADM also said that its new facility is capable of producing 25% of the nation's propylene glycol. The company assured that their bio-PG is is competitively priced.

Some additional information on bio-PG from a 2010 Soybean New Uses report by consulting firm Omni Tech International (commissioned by the United Soybean Board):

"Huntsman and Dow Chemical have also announced plans tomake propylene glycol from glycerin. Metabolic Explorer in France has announced abioprocess technology to produce propylene glycol from glycerin. With an abundance of crude glycerin from biodiesel plants, the economics for these new plants and processes are attractive. However, new uses for crude glycerin (Blog comment: such as epichlorohydrin??) have been found, which have driven up its cost and slowed the building of plants with this newer technology."

According to Omni Tech, Arch Chemical, Dow Chemical, Huntsman and Lyondell are major petroleum-based PG producers with annual US capacity estimated at 1.59 billion pounds. The US has typically exported up to 27% or more of domestic propylene glycol production.

For PG supply and demand, North American demand was estimated in 2008 at 1bn lb/year. Of that, 26%-27% is utilized in the manufacture of unsaturated polyester resins and about 22% is used in de-icing fluid, engine coolants and industrial heat-transfer fluids. Liquid detergents account for another 15% of demand. Food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical use accounts for 20% of the market. The balance is used in a wide number of smaller applications, including paints and coatings.

The green blogger is going to be a very busy bee for the next two weeks covering the "sold out" ICIS 1st World Surfactants conference (I'll do the welcome speech too) in New Jersey, and after that, the 3rd Global Helsinki Chemicals Forum in Helsinki, Finland, where I will participate in a roundtable talking about bio-economy (my stomach has butterflies just thinking about this).

Hopefully, my colleague Clay Boswell, who will attend next week's BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Toronto, Canada, will have some goodies to share after I come back.

For now, here are this week's news roundup:

Biobutanol developer Cobalt Technologies has closed a $20m series D funding round led by Whittemore Collection Ltd., the investment vehicle of Parsons & Whittemore, a global pulp manufacturer. The funding will help Cobalt build its new 470,000 gal/year n-butanol demonstration plant in Alpena, Michigan.

Purac is investigating the participation in a multi-purpose Bioprocess Pilot Facility (BPF) in a consortium of a number of industry partners and universities, including DSM and Delft University of Technology. This Bioprocess Pilot Facility is planned to be built in Delft, The Netherlands and aimed at scale-up research and education for next generation bioprocesses.

Huntsman Polyurethanes will join the Bark Biorefinery Consortium Project, a four-year joint venture between academia and industry that explores value extract from tree bark that is a forest residue left over by the lumber industry. Huntsman will focus on converting bark into value added intermediates for polyurethane.

Solazyme nad Bunge Limited will develop microbe-derived tailored triglyceride oils using Brazilian sugar cane feedstock. Development will take place at Bunge's facility in Moema, Brazil, and at Solazyme's laboratories in South San Francisco and Campinas, Brazil. The companies target construction of a commercial facility with 100,000 metric tons of output oil coming online in 2013.

Air Products announced that its proprietary carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, purification and compression system at Vattenfall AB's research and development facility in Schwarze Pumpe, Germany is onstream. Air Products' technology focuses on the purification and compression of oxyfuel combustion flue gas during the scheduled three year demonstration project.

BioJet International Ltd. announced that Abundant Biofuels Corporation will become a wholly owned subsidiary of BioJet, a supply chain integrator in renewable (bio) jet fuel and related co-products. Abundant is an integrated renewable energy company and develops advanced fuel feedstock such as camelina, jatropha, algae and biomass with more than four million hectares in ten countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Public concern over the health risks posed by plastics is one of the biggest issues facing the industry, said Ernest Coleman, a consultant for CP Technology.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) called for major reform of US chemical regulations, arguing that substance bans should be based on "reasonable levels of concern" rather than actual harm to human health and the environment.

Firm tapioca prices will likely keep sorbitol values in Asia stable in May in spite of a seasonal weakness in demand, market sources said.

My apologies to Carbon Sciences for putting this interview post very, very late. However, this could be a good timing given that price of gasoline is once again within the $4/gal range.

Carbon Sciences, a California-based public company, is developing drop-in gasoline using carbon dioxide and methane gas as feedstock. The company's intellectual property (IP) is centered on its methane dry reforming catalyst based on inexpensive non-noble metals. These catalysts according to Carbon Sciences CEO Byron Elton, are now going through rigorous commercial testing to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry.

Now, I am not that familiar with Carbon Sciences but I did recall talking to former CEO Derek McLeish in late December 2008 about their project of using recycled CO2 to produce precipitated calcium carbonate. The company back then has also been using biocatalysts. Elton noted that the calcium carbonate project has been shelved for now as the company now focuses on producing gasoline from natural gas since the US has plenty of that feedstock lying around. Elton joined the company in January 2009.

Carbon Sciences also started using chemical catalysts early last year in favor of biocatalysts since they are hardier, lasts longer and can withstand impure feedstock and water, said Elton. While the company still owns IP on biocatalyts, the use of chemical catalysts will lead to a quicker route towards commercialization.

"We still have great hopes and long term plans to return to the biocatalytic technology but it is not actively pursued right now." - Byron Elton.

Chemical catalysts are also readily available and inexpensive, said Elton. In December the company had an exclusinve licensing deal with the University of Saskatchewan (UOS) in Canada, which Elton said, directly complements their development in the efficient conversion of CO2 and methane into synthesis gas. Previous attempts in producing gasoline from syngas produce challenges such as fouling of the catalyst with carbon deposits, and the need for pure carbon dioxide (especially if they want to use flue gas) and water.

The UOS catalyst, according to Carbon Sciences achieved 92% conversion with no detectable sintering, no significant carbon deposition, and no catalyst deactivation.Their catalysts also have self-cleaning process, said Elton, which makes them last longer.

Unlike current gas-to-liquid (GTL) processes, Carbon Sciences said their technology will have lower capital costs and processing costs because it uses carbon dioxide as feedstock; it's not as energy intensive compared to those who are using oxygen for their GTL process; and their technology also does not produce significant amount of carbon dioxide (since they're using it for feedstock as well).

Since the company's product is still on a lab-scale, Elton said they will not yet be able to assess estimated value for their gasoline although he did noted through their internal model that it will be competitive to commercial gasoline available especially if they are north of $3/gal.

The company plans to soon move into pilot scale when it receives go-ahead signal from their scientific advisors, said Elton.

"Our internal goal, by the end of June, is where will be able to have all the data necessary so we can be in a position to be able to present to anybody what we have been able to do with confidence," said Elton. "Our main focus is to develop the technology to the point that we can definitely demonstrate that it works, that it is scalable and that it is worth the next significant investment."

Carbon Sciences has recently engaged with Emerging Fuels Technology (EFT) of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to test their catalyst in a commercial facility using protocols required by the oil and gas industry. Elton said they have already received numerous inquiries interested in the commercial use of their catalyst and that the plan is to select one or more commercial development partners by the end of the year.

The company's strategy is to license their catalyst technology to partners.

We got some new information today about BioAmber's planned North American succinic acid facility as the company announced the closing of its series B $45m financing.

According to BioAmber CEO Jean-Francois Huc, the company is finalizing its plans for a 20,000 tonne/year (not 200,000!! sorry!) plant and the choice of the site is now down to two candidates. BioAmber expects to start building this year and commission the facility in the first half of 2013.

"This plant will initially produce succinic acid but we have built into our engineering plans future expansion of capacity to also produce butanediol (BDO), tetrahydrofuran (THF), gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) and succinate esters on the site," - Jean-Francois Huc

The new plant will be partly funded by the $45m financing, which will also help fund ongoing development work in second generation succinic acid and conversion of succinic acid to BDO using DuPont's technology. BioAmber said it will also build an in-house R&D capabilities to accelerate development of its adipic acid platform.

New investors in the financing include European invesment firm NAXOS Capital Partners and Tokyo-based Mitsui & Co. Also participating in the round were existing investors Sofinnova Partners based in Europe, California-based Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners and the Cliffton Group based in Quebec, Canada.

By the way, BioAmber recently bagged a partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC) in a succinic acid supply. You can read all about it in a previous post.

[Photo of BioAmber's succinic acid facility in Pomacle, France]

Cereplast announced today that is planning to build a bioplastic manufacturing plant in Assisi (Cannara), Italy. The plant will be owned and operated by Cereplast Italia SPA and will be financed through local and regional financing/subsidies with Italian institutions from various state and local agencies. Initial investment is expected around EUR10m-EUR12m ($14.8m-$17.8m).

Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer said 85% of their business is now based in Europe. He noted that the bioplastic market in the region is expected to reach 1m tons by 2014 as reported by the European Plastics trade organization.

"We believe this new plant will create efficiencies, reduce transportation costs and minimize risks in our business. This new manufacturing facility will position Cereplast to effectively serve that expanding market."

Capacity of the plant is expected at 100,000 tons/year or 220m lbs/year and will be build in several phases. The first phase at 50,000 tons is expected to start in late 2012, the second phase also at 50,000 tons will begin in mid-2013 based on market demand. The plant site, which is said to be a former chemical site, will enable the company to use existing infrastructure.

[Photo by Elsa Wenzel/CNET News.com]

Last week, Avantium announced the start-up of its furanics-based polyester pilot plant at the Chemelot site in Geleen, the Netherlands. The green blog has been following Avantium's development of its platform chemical 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) which will be marketed under the brand name YXY (pronounced ~ ixy).

Avantium CEO Tom van Aken said the 5 ton/year polyester pilot plant is part of a bigger pilot plant that the company is building at the site to demonstrate its YXY technology. The second pilot plant will produce 40 ton/year FDCA monomer, which is expected to come onstream in the second half of 2011. 

"When necessary we will be able to produce larger volumes of FDCA based polyesters such as PEF (poly-ethylene-furanoate) by using existing PET plants -- no retrofitting needed once we have larger volumes of FDCA monomer available." - Tom van Aken

Now, the YXY polyester pilot plant, according to Avantium, will be used to produce, develop and testing of biobased polyesters such as PEF, which is expected to compete with petroleum-based polyesters such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The company said their PEF has already demonstrated superior properties such as barrier properties and ability to withstand heat.

As the blog reported before, Avantium is collaborating with industrial partners such as NatureWorks and Teijin Aramid to develop novel materials on basis of its YXY building blocks. Possible applications include water and soft drink bottles, carpets, textiles, high-performance fibers, coatings and plasticizers.

Last year, Avantium indicated plans to have a demonstration plant of around 1,000 ton/year in 2012 and an industrial plant with capacities between 10,000 and 100,000 tons/year is expected by late 2014. Van Aken said the company envisions their PEF bottles will be commercially available in the 2014-2015 timeframe.

"As you know there is a very strong demand from brand owners for 100% biobased and 100% recyclable bottles. We believe that PEF will be price competitive and will have superior properties in comparison to PET bottles. The bottleneck today is the limited availability of the material; with the pilot plant we are taking an important step to make larger volumes available for application development (not only bottles, but also fiber, film and high-end applications such as engineering plastics)."

When asked about their feedstock, Avantium said the pilot plant is currently using fructose or glucose syrups but the strategy is to work towards using non-edible carbohydrates such as (hemi)-cellulose-based carbohydrates.

"We continue to undertake process R&D for next generation feeds to ensure feedstock diversity and to further enhance the LCA of our products, which we believe will be significantly better than all other bioplastics on the market." - Tom van Aken

[Aerial view of Avantium's pilot facility in the Netherlands]