French company Afyren has received €60 million in funding to commercialise technology that, through utilising the natural actions of bacteria, can produce industrial chemicals from recycled plant waste instead of fossil fuels.
The process involves taking sugars from agricultural and certain industrial waste byproducts, as well as food waste, and fermenting them into industrial chemicals.
The funding is to move forward Afyren's plans to move the technology towards commercialisation. This includes the construction of its first manufacturing plant.
Afyren's current production plant. Source: Afyren.
“We have been working on fermentation for the past 10 years,” said Nicolas Sordet, Afyren’s CEO. “Today, we have a great level of experience and confidence, high enough to be able to move toward the industrial scale.”
Afyren produces a range of chemicals, including butyric acid and acetic acid. Many of the chemicals the company produces are used in the food, chemical and agricultural industries. It's through these industries that Afyren sources the waste sugars needed for the new process.
The company's plan is to be the first provider of affordable, commercialised industrial chemicals made from organic waste. “We have decided to take a different approach compared with the usual standard of the industry, with no genetically-modified microorganisms and a zero waste process,” Sordet said.
Using recycled plant waste instead of fossil fuels has several ecological advantages. By using these waste products, the company's carbon footprint has been drastically reduced. Also, Afyren's technology does not rely on crops to produce chemicals, unlike many other biological processes used in their manufacture. Therefore there is no competition for arable land with food crops.
Afyren is not the only European company turning recycling waste into chemicals. Swiss firm Clariant uses fermentation to create biofuel from plant waste in collaboration with Exxon-Mobil. French firm Carbios uses enzymes in a process that breaks down plastic waste into building blocks, which can then be recycled into new plastics.
Company co-founder Jérémy Pessiot stressed “we are firmly committed to providing a first class environmental profile, particularly in terms of reducing CO² emissions, and also competitiveness, enabling industrial customers to replace petroleum-based products with our natural building blocks.”
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