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Scientists operating Carbios’ technology for the enzymatic recycling of PET.

Carbios, the French biotech company, announced the launch of the construction of its industrial demonstration plant for the enzymatic recycling of PET plastic. The demonstration plant is located near Lyon, in France’s Chemistry Valley, the French hub of innovation and industrial production in the chemical, environmental and cleantech sector. Carbios is supported and advised by TechnipFMC for the engineering and construction of this demonstration plant.

Carbios is working with major brands like L’Oreal, Nestle, and PepsiCo and has a partnership with Novozymes, the world’s largest enzyme producer, to scale up and produce PET-degrading enzymes. 

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“We’re the only one using enzymes science on one side and the plastics science on the other side and by doing that we are developing technology for end-of-life for plastics,” said Martin Stephan, Chief Operating Officer of Carbios.

The objective of the plant is to generate technical data that will allow Carbios to define the main parameters for each step of the enzymatic recycling process, on a sufficient scale to be able to plan the operation of future industrial units. The first phase of the system operations is scheduled to launch in the second quarter of 2021. This will allow Carbios 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.

The demonstration plant will validate the technical, environmental, and economic performance of Carbios’ innovative technology. It will also produce batches of monomers for technical and regulatory validation of recycled PET by future licensees.

“Our technology is able to meet a very strong market demand, particularly from the brand-owners of our Consortium, which include companies like L’Oréal, Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo, and Suntory Beverage & Food Europe,” Stephan said. “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.”