Matrìca: Porto Torres inaugurates new green chemistry complex
01.07.2014
Daniele Ferrari, Chairman, and Catia Bastioli, Managing Director of Matrìca, inaugurated the plant converting vegetable oils into monomers and intermediates, the base products for downstream production of more complex bio-products. In the coming months another two plants being built at the new Matrìca complex will come on-stream; at these two plants, monomers and intermediates will be transformed into extensor oils for the tyre industry and into a raft of innovative products with high added value, such as bases for bio-lubricants, plasticizers for polymers and products for cosmetic formulations. Representing a global investment of about 180 million Euro, the three plants will produce a total capacity of bio-products of approximately 70 thousand tons per year. The Matrìca products are the fruit of an innovative integration between agriculture and industry, combining renewability, sustainability and biodegradability. They provide the highest performance levels required for formulation and production of bio-plastics, bio-lubricants, products for household care and personal and health care, plant protection, additives for the rubber and plastics industry, food fragrances. ´The first Matrìca plant that we are inaugurating today, brought about by the strategic partnership between Novamont and Versalis, uses a proprietary technology radically different from all other existing technologies: it does not use ozone in the vegetable oil oxidative scission reaction and allows us to produce intermediates known as azelaic acid and pelargonic acid, as well as new proprietary products, through a safe process with low environmental impact. This result represents a key step in a process that began more than 20 years ago with a stubborn group of researchers working in the bioplastics sector and which is leading to the creation here in Sardinia of the first third-generation integrated biorefinery and the conversion of other sites in Italy”, said Catia Bastioli, Managing Director of Novamont and Matrìca. Source: PlasticNews.com