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Biotech on the brink


Investors need to be reassured there will be a market for biobased products and processes before the relevant technologies can be commercialised. Cath O’Driscoll reports from the recent EFIB meeting in Brussels


Twenty five years ago, researchers at Louvain-La-Neuve University in Belgium made a remarkable discovery. They found a bacterium that could ferment sugars to make lactic acid, a potent natural antimicrobial compound useful in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals as well as a food preservative. Three years ago, biotech firm Galactic finally established proof of concept to use this same fermentation step as a route to produce a potentially far more valuable commodity, the polymer polylactic acid (PLA). The company established its first PLA pilot plant in a former Brussels discotheque not long afterwards, then moved two years ago to a sugar mill in Walloon. Today Galactic has plants in China, Japan and the US, and produces a range of natural antimicrobial compounds, including lactic acid by fermentation, said ceo Frederic van Gansberghe, speaking at the European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology (EFIB) in Brussels in October 2013. It also formed a 50/50 joint venture in 2007 for the production of PLA with oil giant Total, called Futerro, and expects lactic acid capacity may eventually increase year to hundreds of tonnes/year to satisfy demand from both the traditional and PLA market. The company’s progress appears to be typical of what is happening elsewhere in Europe’s burgeoning biotechnology sector. Already, the biobased economy


16 Chemistry&Industry • November 2013


is a €2 trillion industry, employing 22m people in Europe alone, and is expected to continue growing at 20%/year until 2020, according to consulting group Smithers Rapra. A recent WWF report, it points out, assessed the climate change mitigation potential of biotechnology processes and products at between 1bn and 2bn t/year of CO2


equivalent by 2030.


In the field of white or industrial biotechnology represented at EFIB, concerned with the production of biofuels and chemicals, the key issue now is attracting the necessary investment to scale up technologies, according to speakers at the meeting. Money is needed to move beyond the initial pilot to much larger demonstration and commercial scale plants where the financial investment, and the accompanying risks, are far greater. What is needed, said Stephan Tanda, managing board member at DSM and chair of European biotechnology organisation EuropaBio, is ‘business case clarity’, so that investors can feel confident that there will be a market for their products and processes in the future. A full-scale commercial biotechnology plant can cost around €1bn or more. However, ‘we are not looking for taxpayer money, but for standards and volumes mandates and [initiatives to encourage] biopreferred sourcing,’ Tanda said. Tanda and others at EFIB welcomed EU


proposals in July 2013 for a €3.8bn public private partnership (PPP) to accelerate the development of biobased products including greener fuels and chemicals as part of Europe’s seven-year Horizon 20/20 innovation and research strategy due to start in 2014. The biotechnology PPP will see the European Commission invest €1bn from 2014 to 2020 alongside industry


investment of €2.8bn from 48 leading European companies in the biotech, chemical, energy, agro-food, and pulp and paper sectors, and is set to commence work once EU member states are expected to approve the plans later in 2013. Creating demand for biobased


products and processes, however, is also about convincing consumers about their performance. Very few consumers would be willing to pay more for products simply because they are biobased, for instance, commented P&G’s director of global sustainability Victoria Halias. ‘It’s me first and then the planet,’ Helias said, referring to a recent advert for Pantene Pro-V Nature Fusion shampoo, which comes in a new bottle made with 59% plant-based ingredients. The advert’s message is it’s a ‘Healthy choice for your hair, a healthy choice for the planet’. That message was reinforced by Ecover ceo Philip Malmberg, speaking about the company’s goal to launch a range of 100% biobased Natural Born cleaning products by the end of 2015, up from the current 90% today. When they were first launched several years ago, biobased cleaners had a hard time competing against their petrochemical equivalents because customers were not convinced of their performance, Malmberg acknowledged. Today, they have been shown to be equally good if not better. Almost 40% of European laundry


washes are now done at ‘cold temperatures’ around 30o


C, thanks


largely to enzymes, according to Helias. Meanwhile, Ecover has recently launched a new soap GLOCAL, based on a tailormade algal or microbial oil, to replace palm oil linked to deforestation, the company reported.


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