The PEFerence project supported the construction of Avantium’s FDCA plant in Delfzijl, in the Netherlands. The first batch of FDCA was announced on 28 September, with commercial sales expected by the end of the year. The plant is designed to produce 5 kilotonnes a year, and the EU grant helped attract a further €20 million in private investment. The company describes this scale as small for the chemical industry and foresees 100 kilotonnes as a next step. It reports agreements with more than 20 companies planning to use PEF from the flagship plant, which it presents as a fully bio-based plastic with stronger barrier properties against carbon dioxide and oxygen than PET.

In Zaragoza, the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project supported a first-of-its-kind biorefinery operated by Urbaser that converts household organic waste and sewage sludge into biopolymers for compostable bags and agricultural films, fertilisers and soil improvers, coating materials and graphene made from carbon recovered from urban waste. The project’s innovation director describes the aim as treating organic waste as a renewable urban feedstock rather than as material to be disposed of.

The article also points to the barriers that remain after technical validation. Bio-based products can be more expensive than fossil-based ones, and regulations designed around fossil industries may need updating, according to the coordinator of the ShapingBio project at Fraunhofer ISI. New partnerships are needed between farmers or forestry companies and the downstream chemical and plastics industries. At the Dublin summit, the Bio-based Europe Alliance, aimed at boosting demand for bio-based products, and an International Bioeconomy Solutions Library are due to be launched.

#BioBasedChemicals #FeedstockSubstitution #CircularEconomy