Glucan Biorenewables wins Renewable Chemistry Start-Up Award

Sofinnova Partners, the renewable chemistry venture capital firm, announced that Glucan Biorenewables is the winner of the prestigious Renewable Chemistry Start-Up Award.

Following a public vote with almost 8,000 votes cast, the Top-5 companies were shortlisted.  These companies then presented yesterday to a jury of industry experts at the BIO World Congress in Montreal.

The Top-5 shortlisted companies were (in alphabetical order):

• Eggplant reuses wastewater as raw material to produce eco-friendly products such as high-performance bioplastics (PHA) through a zero waste process

• GFBiochemicals is the first company to produce levulinic acid at commercial scale directly from biomass by using a proprietary technology in their commercial-scale plant in Caserta, Italy

• Glucan Biorenewables is producing furan derivatives from biomass.  The furfural platform will be used to launch other value-added co-products: 5-hydroxyl-methyl furfural (HMF) and downstream derivatives

• Leaf Resources Ltd has developed a new pretreatment technology that enables plant biomass to be converted efficiently and economically into highly usable cellulose products

• Syngulon is developing original genetic technologies to improve the efficiency of microorganisms involved in industrial bio production