French company Carbios has started construction of its demonstrator enzyme PET recycling plant in Lyon.
Situated in France’s Chemistry Valley, the objective of this plant is to generate technical data that will allow Carbios to define the main parameters for each step of the enzymatic recycling process.
The aim of this is to allow it to plan the operation of future industrial units.
Carbios hopes to open the demonstrator enzyme PET recycling plant in the second quarter of 2021.
Once open, the demonstrator will enable it to establish the complete engineering documents for the process, from waste to monomers, for the construction and implementation of the first industrial unit for a licensee.
It estimated that this first commercial plant will have a capacity between 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes for the licensee.
Carbios chief operating officer Martin Stephan said: “Our technology is able to meet a very strong market demand, particularly from the brand owners of our consortium, which includes companies like L’Oreal, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe.
“Each of these, and many other global multi-national firms, have made ambitious commitments towards sustainable development.
“This demonstration plant will be a showcase site to validate the economic and technical performance of our process and to ensure the training of our future licensees.”
