Italian company Bio-on and Sociedad Cooperativa General Agropecuaria, a Castilian-Leon cooperative which produces and markets sugar, food oils, biodiesel, various products for food animal and renewable electric energy, signed an agreement to begin a technical collaboration, the first in Spain, to study and evaluate the opportunity to exploit at industrial scale the Bio-on technologies for the production of PHA bioplastics from sugar beets processing co- and by-products.
The two companies will start working together to implement a dedicated and tailored feasibility study for the realization of a PHA industrial plant in Spain, in the factory of ACOR located in the town of Olmedo. The selection of this specific production site will guarantee the bioplastic project to benefit from synergies, interconnections and common services with the sugar factory, but without interfering with the latter’s production, and specific production capacity will be decided during the project implementation accordingly.
“We are satisfied to start this important journey – declared J. Carlos Rico Mateo, President of ACOR – that put in its centre the valorization of our sugar beets as raw materials of an innovative green process without interfering with the sugar production. The common view of the companies toward a more sustainable society will allow us to set up the perfect baseline for the realization of the first PHA production plant in Spain”.
In the framework of this agreement, Bio-on grants to ACOR the onerous and exclusive right to exercise in the coming months an option regarding the exploitation of the Bio-on technology in the territories of Spain and Portugal implementing an Industrial Plant for the production and sale of PHAs biopolymers, starting from sugar beets wastes, co- and by-products.
All the Minerv PHA bioplastics (polyhydroxyalkanoates) developed by Bio-on are made from renewable plant sources (and now also lipid) without any competition with the food chains. “They guarantee – the company claims – the same thermo-mechanical properties of conventional plastics with the advantage of being eco-friendly and 100% naturally biodegradable. In addition, they offer application possibilities, even completely unpublished, in sectors where traditional plastics are not used.
“Bio-on is very happy to start to work in Spain with ACOR, it will be very exciting to study the integration of the PHAs plant with the production process of Olmedo”, explained Marco Astorri, Chairman and CEO of Bio-on. “It is a very positive result and a new route of collaboration for the Bio-on company in the fast-growing market of bioplastics”
IL BIOECONOMISTA 