Renewable chemistry company Avantium N.V., headquartered in the Nederlands has successfully attracted a new customer for the polyethylene furanoate, or PEF, that will be made from the furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) it will be producing in the future.The company announced early Monday morning that it had signed an offtake agreement with Monosuisse AG, a leading producer of a wide variety of synthetic monofilaments for industrial use.
Under the agreement, Monosuisse will gain access to PEF made from FDCA to be produced at Avantium’s planned FDCA flagship plant, which it will use to further develop sustainable and high-performance PEF-based monofilament yarns for commercial introduction once the flagship plant is operational.
This flagship plant is currently under construction in Delfzijl, the Netherlands.
Avantium expects to bring the plant, claimed to be the world’s first commercial facility for the manufacture of FDCA from plant-based sugars, on stream in 2024.
The agreement is one of several such agreements that Avantium has entered into. The company has consistently pursued collaboration based on future sales as a means to help scale production. To that end, it has partnered with companies as varied as toy brick manufacturer Lego and the Danish brewer Carlsberg, successfully achieving a number of offtake commitments.
This latest agreement again expands the range of potential applications of PEF. It means ‘the opening of another new market for our high-quality, plant-based polymer’, according to Bas Blom, Managing Director of Avantium Renewable Polymers.
Avantium’s PEF is a 100% plant-based and fully recyclable polymer with a wide range of applications such as packaging, film and textiles. In addition to packaging materials made from PEF, Avantium has collaborated with Monosuisse on the development of PEF for fibres and yarns.
For many years, Monosuisse has been committed to sustainability in all areas of production, and sustainability is a criterion for the choice of its suppliers. The company was impressed by the performance of PEF in monofilament yarns.
“Beyond its sustainable advantages, such as being 100% plant-based and fully recyclable, PEF is spinnable in the existing spinning lines without any hurdle or further investment,” said Philipp Kohler, Chief Technology Officer at Monosuisse.
Avantium and Monosuisse sign offtake agreement
