Circa’s bio-based levoglucosenone and derivatives now available directly to researchers

In Australia, biotech company Circa Group, who produces versatile, bio-based platform chemical levoglucosenone (LGO) from waste cellulose, launched a new e-commerce shop which enables LGO and some of its derivatives to be directly purchased for research and discovery purposes.

LGO is an outstanding building block with applications in a wide range of areas, such as pharmaceuticals – including coronavirus therapeutics – agrochemicals, bio-based polymers and the flavours and fragrances industries. Until recently, many LGO-based products were only available on a very small scale with little proven technology to synthesise them on a larger scale.

Circa’s prototype plant in Tasmania, Australia uses the patented Furacell™ process to produce around 1000 kg per month of LGO-based products. Further increase in production capacity will come with Circa’s new plant, which is set to produce 1,000 tonnes per year of bio-based solvent CyreneTM. Located in Eastern France, engineering work has recently begun and the estimated commissioning date is end of 2022.