Biotechnology specialist Afyren (Saint-Beauzire / France; www.afyren.com) is to build a production plant for organic acids at the French petrochemicals site of Carling-Saint Avold. The acids will be used for polymerisation of plastics, among other things. The company has collected around EUR 60m for the commercial production. To implement the project, a joint venture has been founded with the state-owned investment bank Bpifrance (Paris / France; www.bpifrance.fr) under the name Afyren Neoxy, in which Afyren has a stake of 51%. Bpifrance has invested EUR 23m for its share.

The plant will have a capacity of 16,000 t/y and is scheduled to go on stream in 2021. Pilot production is currently running at Afyren with a capacity of several hundred litres. With its "Afynerie" technology, Afyren processes compostable waste from agriculture and households into various carboxylic acids, including acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, isobutyric acid, valeric acid, isovaleric acid and caproic acid. According to CEO Nicolas Sordet, end products include biofuels, biopolymers and ingredients for the cosmetics sector.

Over the last few years, Carling has been gradually turning from a small centre of Total’s petrochemicals division into a biotechnology and recycling cluster. Afyren is already the second biotech company at the site. In the vicinity, Metabolic Explorer (Saint-Beauzire / France; www.metabolic-explorer.fr) is planning – with support from Bpifrance – a production facility for butyric acid and 1,3-propanediol, due to go on stream in 2020. This will be smaller, with a projected capacity of 6,000 t/y – of which 5,000 t/y will be propanediol.