AFTERBIOCHEM

• Industrial upscaling:upscaled the entire process of fermentation, extraction/distillation and synthesis to industrial scale, proving the competitiveness of the process and the viability of the technology, and obtained commercial quantities of derivatives, including different types of esters, vinyl acetate monomers and cellulose acetate.

• Pricing and market interest: validated a pricing strategy geared to be competitive with oil-based products and assessed market interest in the bio-based alternatives.

• Costs and CO2 reduction: refined the capital and operating costs of the process and its potential deployment at commercial scale, and demonstrated the reduction in CO2 emissions compared with existing petrochemical production methods.

• Feedstock supply: validated future feedstocks and set up and secured the feedstock for the flagship biorefinery supply chain, including processing and logistics.

• Impact and business strategy: characterised the environmental and socioeconomic impact of integrating the process into a standard sugar refinery, determined the main criteria for its acceptance within the sugar industry to fine-tune parameters, process performance and the business model, and determined marketing and business strategies for the European sugar industry and other industries (including chemicals and waste management), including a funding strategy for replicating the model across Europe by 2027.

Results

• Integrated biorefinery: inaugurated a first-of-its-kind integrated biorefinery in Carling Saint-Avold, France.

• Fermentation technology: developed and optimised a unique system combining anaerobic batch fermentation and esterification to turn non-food biomass into eco-friendly products.

• Process advantages: treated biomass co-products directly without pretreatment, reducing operational costs and complexity, and used non-genetically modified microorganisms in a consolidated fermentation that streamlined production and enhanced productivity.

• Zero-waste production: applied a zero-waste principle in which water was completely recycled and the only by-product was a potassium-rich fertiliser suitable for organic farming, returning nutrients to the soil.
  Industrial production and jobs: started industrial production in 2024, enabling the sale of several dozen tonnes of bio-based carboxylic acids, and created 80 direct jobs at the biorefinery and an estimated 240 indirect jobs.

Impacts

• Sugar beet sector: valorised underused by-products of sugar refining, maximising returns for the sugar beet sector and contributing to BBI JU KPIs.

• Cross-sector interconnections: contributed to establishing at least six new cross-sector interconnections for the sugar production sector, connecting it to the flavour and fragrance, polymer, cosmetics, hygiene, animal health and mineral industries, and connecting the waste management industry to the mineral and polymer industries.

• New value chains: contributed to creating at least five new bio-based value chains between beet and pulp molasses and the cosmetics, feed and food, agriculture, textile and paper sectors.

• Building blocks and materials: contributed to producing seven carboxylic acids and four derivatives from sustainable bio-based feedstock, along with new bio-based materials such as lacquer, nail varnish, flavour and fragrance ingredients and fibres, with potential for others beyond the consortium’s immediate sectors.

• Products and environment: contributed to demonstrating consumer-oriented products, including preservatives for food and feed, nail varnish, fertilisers and flavour and fragrance ingredients, while reducing dependence on petrochemical-based ingredients and encouraging innovation in organic waste recovery and recycling, which minimised the fraction going to landfill or incineration.