10 Biggest Bioeconomy Blockbuster Stories of 2014 (EU, Middle East and Africa)

December 23, 2014 |

top-10Aviation biofuels on the rise, in the skies” tops the trend list; drop-in and cellulosic ethanol projects; M&A and cap raises, and action from strategic investors and customers dominate the headlines this year.

You might know it as EAME or EMEA, but its some combination of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and it’s been a hot year in all three locations when it comes to aviation biofuels, which is our #1 Blockbuster story for the region in 2014. There were other hot storylines — from cellulosic and drop-in fuel deployments, Green Fleets, and big investments from major strategics all along the supply chain. But nothing quite equaled the action in the skies.

Here are the Top 10 developments of the year.

1. Aviation biofuels on the rise and in the skies.

The announcements may not involve super-massive production plants — but look at the number and variety of stories on aviation biofuels in the EU and you’ll see right away why it’s out #1. SAS, Luftahansa, KLM, Finnair, Air France, British Airways, SAA, Virgin and Etihad were among the aurlines oeading the way this year. Boeing, Masdar, Statoil, Sky NRG, Solena Fuels, Takreer and Total have been among the companies developing and producing fuels and certification. 7 different major storylines — almost one every 7 weeks, kept aviation biofuels at the top in the EU all year.

SAS, Lufthansa and KLM sign aviation biofuel agreement for Oslo. In November, SAS along with the Lufthansa Group and KLM, signed an agreement with Statoil Aviation for a regular supply of bio-fuel at Oslo Airport. SAS was first off the ground in Norway and from Stockholm Arlanda in Sweden with a bio-fuel mix around a week ago and this agreement shows the airline takes its corporate social responsibility seriously in reducing its green house gas emissions. Via an agreement signed with Avinor and the above named airlines, Statoil Aviation is to supply 2.5 million liters of bio-fuel to the refueling facility at Oslo Airport. With a 50% bio-fuel mix, this will fuel around 3,000 flights between Oslo and Bergen and make OSL the first major airport in the world to offer a regular supply of bio-fuel as part of daily operations from March 2015.

Air France launches 10% blend route to spotlight need for more supply. In October, Air France began flying one flight a week between Paris and Toulouse on a 10% biofuel blend in an attempt to show governments the need to develop aviation biofuel supplies for industry. The biofuel route is planned through September 2015.

Finnair flies A330 from Helsinki to New York on biofuels. In September, Finnair flew a A330 from Helsinki to New York partially on used cooking fuel-based jet fuel to highlight the opening of the UN Climate Summit. The fuel was supplied by SkyNRG Nordic, a JV between SkyNRG and Statoil Aviation. The airline says it is hoping to set up a biofuel fueling hub along with partners to help reduce the cost of aviation biofuels and strengthen the supply chain.

Solena Fuels chooses site in Essex for aviation biofuel facility. In April, British Airways and Solena Fuels chose Thurrock, Essex for its MSW-to-aviation biofuels project that will produce 120,000 metric tons of fuel annually from 2017. BA has commited to buy 50,000 tons of the fuel that will be made from 575,000 tons of post-recycled waste.

Boeing, Etihad Airways, Takreer, Total, and Masdar to collaborate for sustainable aviation biofuels in the UAE. In January, Boeing, Etihad Airways, Takreer, Total, and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology announced a collaboration for sustainable aviation biofuels in the UAE. The collaboration, BIOjet Abu Dhabi: Flight Path to Sustainability, will develop a comprehensive framework for a UAE biofuel supply chain, which is already in motion. Etihad Airways recently completed a 45-minute demonstration flight in a Boeing 777 powered partially by biofuel converted from plants by Total, and refined into jet fuel by Takreer, together representing UAE-produced sustainable aviation biofuel.

Tobacco planting underway for Boeing and SAA’s aviation biofuel project. 
Earlier this month, Boeing and South African Airlines announced that South African farmers will soon harvest their first crop of energy-rich tobacco plants, an important step towards using the plants to make sustainable aviation biofuel. Boeing and SAA, along with partners SkyNRG and Sunchem SA, also officially launched Project Solaris, their collaborative effort to develop an aviation biofuel supply chain with a nicotine-free tobacco plant called Solaris. In Limpopo province, company representatives and industry stakeholders visited commercial and community farms where 123 acres (50 hectares) of Solaris have been planted.

HSBC to join Virgin Atlantic, LanzaTech partnership for low carbon jet fuel. In October, Virgin Atlantic announced that the UK’s largest bank, HSBC, is joining its partnership with LanzaTech in preparation for a world-first flight using a ground-breaking low carbon fuel. The support of HSBC will allow production of this innovative new fuel to move from sample size to demo scale – and will produce a sufficient amount of fuel to conduct the proving flight. These are vital steps in the process to achieve American Society for Testing and Materials certification of the alcohol to jet production pathway. ASTM certification is a significant step towards commercialization of LanzaTech’s sustainable fuel solution, which is expected to have half the carbon footprint of petroleum jet.

2. DuPont, Beta Renewables cellulosic projects

As in the Americas, cellulosic biofuels deployment has been big news all over the world this year, and it’s been surprisingly super-hot in the EU all year despite complaints in the past about “where is the feedstock”. Beta Renewables and DuPont both announced projects to the east, in Slovakia and Macedonia respectively.

DuPont, Ethanol Europe Renewables ink pact for cellulosic ethanol in Macedonia. As much of the advanced biofuels industry headed for Kansas in October to take part in the opening ceremonies for Abengoa’s cellulosic ethanol refinery in Hugoton, news arrived from Skopje, Macedonia that the Republic of Macedonia joined a MOU to facilitate the development of the cellulosic ethanol market in the Pelagonia region between Ethanol Europe and DuPont.

According to DuPont, “This collaboration agreement brings together three critical components for the preparation of detailed feasibility studies for a commercial scale 2G ethanol plant to supply the European market.” Macedonia’s Minister for Foreign Investments Bill Plaveski told media following a signing ceremony in Skopja that “The project includes a construction of modern biorefinery with a capacity of 100 million liters. The project, a five-year investment of EUR 250 million, will create 1,000 jobs. The plant’s construction should start in 2016 and be completed for two years.”

Beta Renewables, Biochemtex ink deal for commercial-scale cellulosic biofuels project in Slovakia. In October, Biochemtex and Beta Renewables announced an agreement with Energochemica SE for the construction of a 16.5 million gallon (55,000 ton per year) cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant, which will be constructed in Strazske, Slovak Republic, will also generate power and steam. The project is commencing immediately and the start-up of the plant is anticipated for the first half of 2017. The plant will utilize non-food biomass as its feedstock and is expected to deliver “cost-competitive ethanol” according to the project sponsors.

3. The Petrixo, Empyro drop-in fuels projects

This year, the headlines have been dominated by cellulosic ethanol projects, but one smaller py oil project in the Netherlands and an absolutely massive Petrixo project in the Emirates offer the evidence that drop-in fuels are alive and well in the region.

Honeywell’s UOP tapped by Petrixo for massive Emirates biorefinery. UOP technology will be used for 150 million gallons of capacity; who get’s the other half? In July, UOP announced that its green fuels process technology has been selected by Petrixo Oil & Gas to produce renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel at a new refinery to be built in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

The deal is huge because the capacity is, too. 1 million tons — think roughly 300 million gallons. In the case of UOP, Petrixo will use UOP Renewable Jet Fuel process technology to process approximately 500,000 metric tons per year of renewable feedstocks into renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel, also known as Honeywell Green Jet Fuel and Honeywell Green Diesel. The process technology is capable of processing a variety of renewable feedstock, and is currently being used by Diamond Green Diesel to produce green diesel at a 133 Mgy commercial-scale facility in Norco, Louisiana — and is used to make green diesel at the Eni refinery in Venice, Italy.

Empyro breaks ground on biomass pyrolysis oil production plant in The Netherlands. In May, Theo Rietkerk (Representative Economy, Energy and Innovation of the Province of Overijssel) placed a foundation pillar to mark the start of construction of the Empyro pyrolysis oil production plant, located at the AkzoNobel site in Hengelo (The Netherlands). Construction will be complete by the end of 2014, and the project developers say that  production capacity will gradually increase to more than 20 million litres of pyrolysis oil per year.

The core conversion process is a flash pyrolysis plant based on BTG technology. In Europe, no commercial pyrolysis oil production plant is in operation. The plant will be based on the design and experience gained by BTG through the construction of a 50 tonne/day pyrolysis plant in Malaysia. The plant design will be further scaled up to a commercially attractive scale of 120 tonne/day (~ 25MWth). The feedstock will be local woody biomass and/or residues.

4. Flotta Verde! The Italian Navy’s Green Fleet underway

In biofuels, there’s development, and then there’s deployment with strategic customers, and the Italian fleets Flotte Verde is about the most important new fuels-centric hotspot for demand. In this story, we looked at the Italian Navy’s successful first trial of advanced drop-in biofuels at scale, at sea.

Flotta Verde! The Italian Navy’s Green Fleet underway.The ship performed smoothly and we didn’t notice any difference in switching from conventional F76 to green F76,” said Commander Alberto Raganato, captain of the ITS Foscari, an Offshore Patrol Vessel assigned to the Italian Navy Coastal Command based in Augusta, Sicily which sailed in January as part of the Flotta Verde effort.

On January 29th, his ship became the first certified for the Italian Navy’s Green Fleet, one day after its return to home port and upon completion of a 5 hours sea trial. The successful trial was the final stage of the experimentation protocol set by the Italian energy company ENI’s chemists and technicians in close cooperation with the Italian Navy’s marine engineers. The process produces Honeywell Green Diesel — a high performing diesel fuel that can be used without any modification to the existing equipments on board, and that it is fully compatible with current logistic system.

5. A heady dawn for Nanocellulose

We called it “the oddest, most interesting product you can make out of a forest, and displace products made from petrochemicals” and elsewhere it has been described as “the Next World-Changing Supermaterial” in a Gizmodo piece that warned “Watch out, graphene” and described it as the “kevlar-strength, super-light, greenhouse gas-eating nanomaterial of the future.” ’Nuff said, except to note that Borregaard is going all out on a technology in this space, and bears watching.

The strange world of super-strong, super-light nano cellulose. The news filtered out of Norway in October that the Borregaard will invest $34M (NOK 225 million) in a facility for the production of Exilva microfibrillar cellulose, that will be located at the Borregaard site in Sarpsborg. The commercial scale facility will have an initial design capacity of 1000 tonnes per year with a potential for expansion. Production is expected to start in the 3rd quarter of 2016.

Which is all exciting and great, if you know exactly what microfibrillar cellulose (MFC) is and does. If not, it’s even cooler — a great opportunity to find out all about this gel-like plastic that isn’t a plastic, that’s all wood fiber but isn’t. It might be the oddest, most interesting product you can make out of a forest, and displace products made from petrochemicals.

6. Avantium’s big cap raise

For earlier-stage companies, two tasks are paramount: hitting technology milestones, and keeping the pump primed with equity investment. Avantium’s been getting both done, and this monster $50M cap raise if proof positive.

Avantium raises $50M from Coca-Cola, Danone, Swire and more: renewable PEF plastic bottles take the spotlight. In June, Avantium (ranked #15 in the Digest’s 30 Hottest Companies in Biobased Chemicals) announced that it has closed a financing round of $50 million from a consortium of iconic strategic players. This unique consortium consists of Swire Pacific, The Coca-Cola Company, DANONE, ALPLA, and existing shareholders. Follow on investments were made by existing shareholders Sofinnova Partners, Capricorn Venture Partners, ING Corporate Investments, Aescap Venture, Navitas Capital, Aster Capital and De Hoge Dennen Capital.

With this capital raise the new investors affirm their commitment to advancing PEF, Avantium’s next generation packaging material. Proceeds will be used to complete the industrial validation of PEF and finalize the engineering & design of the first commercial scale plant. As part of its strategy to use responsibly sourced plant based materials for PEF production, Avantium will validate the use of 2nd generation feedstock.

7. The M&A Front: Evolva-Allylix, Lesaffre-Butalco deals

IP is getting snapped up — in this case, 4-carbon and terpenes tech, by Lasaffre and Evolva respectively. The likely near-term impacts will be in nutrition — but it could go all the way to exotic chemicals and super-dense jet fuels before thedse coimnpanies have fully exhausted the value in their new acquisitions.

Evolva acquires Allylix in $59M all-share transaction: what’s the impact for industrial biotech? There’s been quite a bit of press surrounding the idea that “sugar is the new oil”, once famously described by Dr. Steven Chu as the “glucose economy”, and while the jury is still out on the economics, the technology has come along nicely. But in the meantime, it appears to be an open-and-shut case that “new sugars” are the new sugar — and specifically that stevia might be the new sugar. Supporters of the idea that synthetic stevia might be the big winner in the multi-billion sweetener market got a big boost in November when Evolva acquired Allylix, one of the most interesting companies in all of industrial biotechnology and #10 on this year’s 40 Hottest Small Companies in the Advanced Bioeconomy.

The purchase price in the all-share transaction was $59M, and Cargill (Evolva’s partner on its stevia program) will invest USD 4 million in Evolva shares in support of the transaction. The transaction is expected to close before year-end.

Lesaffre acquires Butalco: will the race for sustainable butanol ever be the same? In July, news arrived that Butalco had been acquired by Lesaffre — an old and established yeast company in France that not too long ago launched a new business unit Leaf Technologies dedicated to the development and sales of value added fermentation solutions to the bioethanol and bio based chemicals industries.

The French company has been a multi-national for some time, highly visible in baking, nutrition and health, flavors and fermentation.

Readers with sharp memories might recall that back in July 2012, the early-stage Butalco sold its xylose isomerase technology (xylose isomerase from Clostridium phytofermentans) to Lesaffre — so you could see this acquisition as in some ways a deepening and broadening of an already interesting relationship.

8. Upstream strategics move: Forest products

We called it game-changing – an announce to invest $3B in the sector from European forestry companies. Is there any other way to look at such a number? Although details have been light, it’s transformative already in terms of providing a firm sense of biobased momentum from the forest sector — later on, deployment of projects could be hugely significant.

Scandinavian forest companies invest game-changing $3B for bioenergy and bioproducts. In September, according to Wood Resource Quarterly, forest companies announced that they will invest $3 billion in 2014 to diversify their product lines to include bio-products from wood fiber and to generate bioenergy resources.

In addition to the investments in the pulp and paper industry, there has also been an announcement that the Swedish forest owner federation Sodra, together with the Norwegian energy company Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy, intends to establish an biofuel conglomerate at the site of the now closed pulpmill in Tofte, just south of the capital Oslo.

9. Downstream strategics on the move: Audi, SABIC, Roquette, CIMV

If the upstream strategic feedstock aggregators has the big dollar commitment, there certainly was a lot of deal flow amongst the downstream strategics. Audi, SABIC, CIMV and Roquette had big announces in 2014 for pilot, demonstration or commercial-scale deployments for food, fuels, and chemicals.

Audi launches synthetic fuels pilot plant in Dresden. In November, Audi detailed activity in the development of CO2-neutral, synthetic fuels. The latest project is a pilot plant in Dresden that produces diesel fuel from water, CO2 and green electricity. Audi and its project partners Climeworks and sunfire opened the plant last week. The sunfire plant, which operates according to the power-to-liquid principle, requires carbon dioxide, water and electricity as raw materials. The carbon dioxide is extracted directly from the ambient air using direct air capturing – a technology developed by Swiss partner Climeworks.

SABIC to launch portfolio of renewable polyolefins. In May, SABIC announced that it will launch its first portfolio of certified renewable polyolefins certified under the ISCC Plus certification scheme. With this launch, SABIC becomes the first petrochemicals company to be able to produce renewable second generation polyethylenes and polypropylenes, which will be useful as the packaging industry demands more sustainable materials. To develop the new renewable portfolio, SABIC used its ‘Chemistry that Matters’ approach in working closely with customers to create materials that meet the growing requirements for sustainable materials which do not impact the food chain.

Taurus Energy, CIMV ink partnership for EU-based cellulosic ethanol demo plant. In September, Taurus Energy announced that it had partnered with France-based CIMV, and submitted to the EU Commission a proposal for the construction and operation of a larger demonstration plant for the production of ethanol from biomass.The plan is for the demonstration plant will be built in France. Taurus Energy is responsible for the yeast-based fermentation step in the process. The EU Commission in January 2015 will determine which projects receive grant funding.

CIMV (Compagnie Industrielle de la Matière Vegetale) specializes in taking advantage of the lignin present in all biomassesand exploit this to the production of specialty chemicals under its own patented process. The project has received the designation 2G biopic and using CIMVs patented method, the lignin is first separated before the subsequent enzymatic andfermentation steps convert the hemicellulose and cellulose to ethanol. CIMV has partnered with Dyadic for thedevelopment of an optimized enzyme mixture to the process.

Roquette moves to commercial-scale with microalgae-based food and ingredients project in France. News reached the Digest in June that Roquette had introduced a production unit dedicated to microalgae at its industrial site in Lestrem (Pas de Calais, France). The unit has production capacity of 4,000 to 5,000 tons/year. This industrial unit, which uses chlorella as a target microalgae, launched its new range of food ingredients made from renewable plantbased raw materials with exceptional nutritional potential.

Here’s the line-up: algility HL, whole algal flour, which was recognized as the most innovative ingredient of the year at the FIE Innovation Awards 2013; algility HP, whole algal protein. This whole food ingredient, which is under development, combines plant-based proteins (as an alternative to animal proteins), fibers and unsaturated lipids; and algility chlorella, a nutrient-rich whole food ingredient.

10. Government actions of note in development and deployment

It was a quiet year, on the whole, in government action — perhaps good news because governments have been generally in retreat in the EU in recent years. So, inaction may be a sign of progress. But the UK stepped up on advanced biofuels R&D and Italy with a next-gen fuels mandate – showing that there’s still some life left in EU policy advancement, if not much from Brussels.

UK DOT launches £25 million competition for three advanced biofuels plants. In December, the UK’s Department of Transportation launched a £25 million competition to build advanced biofuel plants. The funds, supported by significant private investment, will enable the construction of up to three demonstration plants.

The fuel produced by the chosen technology must show a minimum of 60% greenhouse gas emissions reductions compared with fossil fuels. Advanced biofuels are made from waste materials such as agricultural residues like straw, using complex processing techniques. They can produce a wide range of transport fuels for roads and aviation.

This £25 million funding will be made available over 3 years. The Competition will be run in two stages with a detailed Expression of Interest (EoI) stage for potential bidders open until 13th February 2015, followed by full proposals in June 2015.

Italy sets first advanced biofuel mandate in Europe. In October, the Italian government created a 0.6% advanced biofuels blending mandate by 2018, the first in Europe to set up such a policy to boost demand for next generation fuels. That figure will increase to 1% by 2022. Beta Renewables produces 75 million liters per year at its facility in Crescentino and the country expects three more cellulosic ethanol plants to come online in southern Italy during the next year.

Category: Top Stories

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