#Recycling / Circular Economy

2020-07-02

Carbios begins construction on industrial demonstration plant in final step to commercializing its PET recycling technology

Carbios (Euronext Growth Paris: ALCRB) a company pioneering new bio-industrial solutions to reinvent the lifecycle of plastic and textile polymers, announced the launch of the construction of its industrial demonstration plant for the enzymatic recycling of PET plastic. The demonstration plant is located near Lyon, in France’s Chemistry Valley, the French hub of innovation and industrial production in the chemical, environmental and cleantech sector. Carbios is supported and advised by TechnipFMC for the engineering and construction of this demonstration plant[1].

First phase of system operations scheduled to launch in June 2021

The objective of the plant is to generate technical data that will allow Carbios to define the main parameters for each step of the enzymatic recycling process, on a sufficient scale to be able to plan the operation of future industrial units. The first phase of the system operations is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2021. This will allow Carbios to establish the complete engineering documents for the process, from waste to monomers, for the construction and implementation of the first industrial unit for a licensee (estimated capacity between 50 and 100 kt per year).

The demonstration plant will validate the technical, environmental, and economic performance of Carbios’ innovative technology. It will also produce batches of monomers for technical and regulatory validation of recycled PET by future licensees.

Martin Stephan, Chief Operating Officer of Carbios, comments: “Our technology is able to meet a very strong market demand, particularly from the brand-owners of our Consortium, which include companies like L’Oréal, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo, and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe. Each of these, and many other global multi-national firms, have made ambitious commitments towards sustainable development. This demonstration plant will be a showcase site to validate the economic and technical performance of our process and to ensure the training of our future licensees.”

Antoine Sévenier, Industrial Development Director of Carbios adds: “The demonstration unit allows us to test different waste streams, and to adapt certain steps of our process to the specification of collection systems. I am very excited to see our revolutionary technology industrializing and becoming a commercial reality in the near future.”

[1] Cf. Press release April 15th, 2020

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