Carbios Begins Construction on Industrial Demonstration Plant in Final Step to Commercializing Its PET Recycling Technology

Regulatory News:

Carbios (Euronext Growth Paris: ALCRB) a company pioneering new bio-industrial solutions to reinvent the lifecycle of plastic and textile polymers, 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 plant1.

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 (estimated capacity between 50 and 100 kt per year).

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.

Martin Stephan, Chief Operating Officer of Carbios, comments: “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. 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.”

Antoine Sévenier, Industrial Development Director of Carbios adds: “The demonstration unit allows us to test different waste streams, and to adapt certain steps of our process to the specification of collection systems. I am very excited to see our revolutionary technology industrializing and becoming a commercial reality in the near future.”

About Carbios:

Carbios is a green chemistry company whose innovations help address the environmental and sustainable development challenges facing manufacturers. Since its creation in 2011 by Truffle Capital, the Company has developed, through biotechnology, two industrial processes that revolutionize the biodegradation and recycling of polymers. These world-first innovations, made possible with the support of Bpifrance (THANAPLAST™ project), enable an optimized performance and lifecycle of plastics and textiles by exploiting the properties of highly specific enzymes.

Carbios' economic development model is based on the industrialization and commercialization of its products and/or enzymes, technologies and bioprocesses through license concessions directly or through joint ventures to major industrial players or sectors concerned by the Company's innovations. As such, Carbios created the joint venture Carbiolice in September 2016, in partnership with Limagrain Ingredients and the SPI fund operated by Bpifrance. This company, of which Carbios has majority control, will exploit the first technology licensed by Carbios by producing enzymatic granules for the production of biodegradable and biobased plastics.

Carbios benefits from the qualification "Innovative Company" of Bpifrance allowing the eligibility of the Company's securities for the investment of Mutual Funds Placement in Innovation (FCPI). For more information, please visit: https://carbios.fr/en/

Carbios is eligible for the PEA-PME, a government program allowing French residents investing in SMEs to benefit from income tax rebates.

This press release does not constitute and cannot be regarded as constituting an offer to the public, an offer to sell or a subscription offer or as a solicitation to solicit a buy or sell order in any country.

Translation for information purposes only. In case of discrepancy between the French and the English version of this press release, the French version shall prevail.


1 Cf. Press release April 15, 2020