First France-based facil­ity for pro­du­cing PHAs from sug­ar beet co-products

The two com­pan­ies, oper­at­ing in sus­tain­able bio­chem­istry and sug­ar, alco­hol and bioeth­an­ol pro­duc­tion, will work togeth­er to build a pro­duc­tion site with a 5 thou­sand tons/​year out­put, expand­able to 10 thou­sand tons/​year. Requir­ing a 70 mil­lion Euro invest­ment, the facil­ity will be loc­ated at a Cristal Uni­on site and will be the most advanced biopoly­mers pro­duc­tion site in the world. The new fact­ory will cre­ate 50 new jobs spe­cial­ised in fer­ment­a­tion to pro­duce this revolu­tion­ary bioplastic. PHAs, or poly­hy­droxyalkanoates, are bioplastics that can replace a num­ber of tra­di­tion­al poly­mers cur­rently made with pet­ro­chem­ic­al pro­cesses using hydro­car­bons. The PHAs developed by Bio-on guar­an­tee the same thermo-mech­an­ic­al prop­er­ties with the advant­age of being com­pletely nat­ur­ally bio­de­grad­able. ​“We are invest­ing in pur­chas­ing the license for this new tech­no­logy developed by Bio-on,” says Cristal Uni­on CEO Alain Com­mis­aire, ​“because this all-nat­ur­al bioplastic is an extraordin­ary tool that can con­trib­ute towards the growth of the French sug­ar industry, but with a mod­ern, eco-com­pat­ible and eco-sus­tain­able approach”. ​“We will cre­ate Europe’s first PHAs pro­duc­tion facil­ity with France’s lead­ing sug­ar pro­duc­tion and trad­ing com­pany,” explains Bio-on S.p.A. Chair­man Marco Astorri. ​“We have gran­ted the first tech­no­lo­gic­al license in line with our expect­a­tions and will also be cre­at­ing a cut­ting-edge col­lab­or­a­tion for man­age­ment and devel­op­ment of the prom­ising high-per­form­ing biopoly­mers busi­ness developed by Bio-on S.p.A. and pro­duced in France by Cristal Uni­on”. The col­lab­or­a­tion between Bio-on and Cristal Uni­on reaches an import­ant mile­stone and adds anoth­er build­ing block in the con­struc­tion of the plat­form for bioplastic pro­duc­tion in the future.

BIO-ON S.p.A.

Bio-On S.p.A., an Itali­an Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­erty Com­pany (IPC), oper­ates in the bioplastic sec­tor con­duct­ing applied re-search and devel­op­ment of mod­ern bio-fer­ment­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies in the field of eco-sus­tain­able and com­pletely nat­ur­ally bio­de­grad­able mater­i­als. In par­tic­u­lar, Bio-On devel­ops indus­tri­al applic­a­tions through the cre­ation of product char­ac­ter­isa­tions, com­pon­ents and plastic items. Since Feb­ru­ary 2015, Bio-On S.p.A. has also been oper­at­ing in the devel­op­ment of nat­ur­al and sus­tain­able chem­ic­als for the future. Bio-On has developed an exclus­ive pro­cess for the pro­duc­tion of a fam­ily of poly­mers called PHAs from agri­cul­tur­al waste (includ­ing molasses and sug­ar cane and sug­ar beet syr­ups). The bioplastic pro­duced in this way is able to replace the main fam­il­ies of tra­di­tion­al plastics in terms of per­form­ance, thermo-mech­an­ic­al prop­er­ties and ver­sat­il­ity. Bio-On PHA is a bioplastic that can be clas­si­fied as 100% nat­ur­al and com­pletely bio­de­grad­able: this has been cer­ti­fied by Vin­cotte and by USDA (United States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture). The Issuer­’s strategy envis­ages the mar­ket­ing of licenses for PHAs pro­duc­tion and related ancil­lary ser­vices, the devel­op­ment of R&D (also through new col­lab­or­a­tions with uni­ver­sit­ies, research centres and indus­tri­al part­ners), as well as the real­isa­tion of indus­tri­al plants designed by Bio-On.

CRISTAL UNI­ON

Cristal Uni­on, the EU’s fourth largest sug­ar beet trans­former with 14 mil­lion tonnes pro­cessed, is an agro-indus­tri­al cooper­at­ive group which accounts for approx­im­ately 40% of French beet pro­duc­tion, encom­passing 2,000 employ­ees and 9,000 part­ners in over 15 pro­duc­tion sites in France (10 sug­ar factor­ies, 3 dis­til­ler­ies and 2 oth­er sites). Pur­su­ing an ambi­tious, com­mit­ted invest­ment policy since its found­a­tion, with­in an RSE strategy, the group plies two long-stand­ing trades: sug­ar for industry and food­stuffs (Daddy, Truvia and Erstein brands), alco­hol and eth­an­ol (fuel, indus­tries, per­fumes, cos­met­ics, food, pre­served in alco­hol) but also for new activ­it­ies in the sec­tor of green ener­gies or biobased chem­istry, her­ald­ing a great future and adding value to the work of its part­ners. Source: Bio-on S.p.A.