Clari­ant and Anhui Guozhen and Chem­tex Announce License Agree­ment on sun­li­quid® Cel­lu­losic Eth­an­ol Tech­no­logy in China

Clari­ant, a focused and innov­at­ive spe­cialty chem­ic­al com­pany, and Anhui Guozhen Group, a Chinese green energy com­pany, and Chem­tex Chem­ic­al Engin­eer­ing, a mul­tina­tion­al engin­eer­ing com­pany, today signed a license agree­ment on sun­li­quid^® cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol tech­no­logy. The Anhui Guozhen Group and Chem­tex have agreed to form a joint ven­ture with the aim of real­iz­ing a full scale com­mer­cial plant for the pro­duc­tion of cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol from agri­cul­tur­al residues. In this frame­work, Clari­ant has gran­ted a license for its sun­li­quid^® cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol tech­no­logy to the joint ven­ture. The pro­ject devel­op­ment and plant oper­a­tion will be executed by the joint ven­ture at a green­field site in Fuyang city in the Anhui province, in the Yangtze-Huai River region in East China, util­iz­ing avail­able land, owned by the Anhui Guozhen Group, and exist­ing infra­struc­ture net­work in the sur­round­ing. The annu­al plant pro­duc­tion capa­city is planned to be 50.000 tons of cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol, with an option to double the capa­city in a second phase (50.000 tons in each phase), mak­ing it one of the largest in China so far. Detailed pro­ject eval­u­ations and pre­par­a­tions for the engin­eer­ing phase are well under­way. The pro­ject exe­cu­tion is pending a final agree­ment of cer­tain gov­ern­ment con­tracts for the pro­ject. ​“For Clari­ant, China rep­res­ents a core growth mar­ket where we want to fur­ther strengthen our pos­i­tion. The coun­try is aim­ing to achieve a 10% bioeth­an­ol con­tent in trans­port­a­tion fuels nation­wide in the next few years. These reg­u­lat­ory com­mit­ments offer sub­stan­tial growth poten­tial for our sun­li­quid^® tech­no­logy by spur­ring demand for advanced bio­fuels.”, said Hans Bohnen, Clariant’s Chief Oper­at­ing Officer. ​“Hence, the sign­ing of a sun­li­quid^® tech­no­logy license with two renowned Chinese play­ers is an import­ant stra­tegic mile­stone to seize those prom­ising busi­ness oppor­tun­it­ies.” ​“Guozhen intends to be a pion­eer and invest in the first com­mer­cial cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol plant in China. We are look­ing for­ward to work with Clari­ant and Chem­tex, two well exper­i­enced com­pan­ies to con­trib­ute to China’s envir­on­ment­al and eco­lo­gic­al advance.”, emphas­ized Li Wei, Founder and Chair­man of the Board of Guozhen Group. ​“As a glob­al indus­tri­al solu­tion pro­vider in bio­fuels, chem­ic­als, poly­mers, fibers and gas pro­cessing, Chem­tex has extens­ive exper­i­ence in part­ner­ing with reputed tech­no­logy licensors par­tic­u­larly in the Chinese mar­ket. Through these part­ner­ships Chem­tex gained sig­ni­fic­ant know­ledge world­wide in first gen­er­a­tion and cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol pro­jects. In China, we have been act­ive for more than 40 years and real­ized over 100 plants. This exper­i­ence will make a major con­tri­bu­tion to the col­lab­or­a­tion between Anhui Guozhen, Clari­ant and Chem­tex for the first Chinese com­mer­cial cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol pro­ject to suc­ceed.”, adds Sean Ma, Chair­man and CEO of Chem­tex. For the Anhui region this sig­ni­fies a note­worthy invest­ment in green, sus­tain­able tech­no­lo­gies. The area is very much char­ac­ter­ized by agri­cul­ture, which guar­an­tees the abund­ance of feed­stock for the cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol plant. By loc­ally sourced feed­stock, in that case wheat straw and corn stover, green­house gas sav­ings can be max­im­ized and addi­tion­al busi­ness oppor­tun­it­ies along the entire value and sup­ply chain will arise. The pro­duced cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol will be util­ized in the Chinese region­al fuels mar­ket as blend into gas­ol­ine to ful­fill the nation­al blend­ing man­date. Cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol pro­duced with sun­li­quid^® saves around 95% of green­house gases com­pared to gas­ol­ine. Source: Clari­ant, Press release, 06.01.2020