The production of biobased chemicals is widely seen as a novel
and emerging endeavour. There is a great deal of discussion and focus on the
development of disruptive technologies such as the use of industrial
biotechnology supported and enhanced by synthetic biology. Synonymous with novel
technologies are the disruptive innovators, typically small or medium
enterprises (SMEs) looking to meet the demands of new or market segments
overlooked by incumbents.
In the biobased chemicals industry there is no shortage of
innovative companies. Established biobased product producers such as
Natureworks and Novamont are driving new application development. New processes
are being developed by numerous innovators including Avantium, Global
Bioenergies and Genomatica. Additionally the speed of biotechnology innovation
is increasing through the enabling capabilities of companies like Twist Bioscience and Ginko Bioworks.
However these are not
the widely recognised behemoths of the chemical industry. So how are the giants
of the chemical industry reacting to the perceived demand for green or
sustainable chemicals and specifically the increasing market demand for biobased
chemicals?
A review of the 2020 ICIS Chemical Business list of the Top 100
chemical companies[1] showed that over 70% have some research or business interest in the biobased
chemicals area. However, an interest does not necessarily equate to activity.
Each month NNFCC captures, collates, and
publishes a summary of company announcements covering biobased products. To
review biobased activity by these top 100 companies we looked back at our
monthly NNFCC news reviews carrying announcements on biobased products during
2020 and 2021. These views capture topical industry news and although not comprehensive,
we feel they are a fair reflection of activity.
This simple analysis indicates that companies higher up the Top
100 list are more likely to have made an announcement about a biobased
development (Figure 1).
In 2020, 21 of the top 100 chemical companies had entries in the
news reviews and this increased to 31 in 2021. This relatively low (although
increasing) reflection of activity across the top 100 companies is in contrast
with the level of activity seen in the Top 10 companies. Of these companies, 7
appeared in the 2020 news reviews, increasing to 8 in 2021. Of the Top 50
companies, 23 featured in the 2021 news reviews up from 17 in 2020.
Figure 1. Percentage of top chemical companies appearing in
2020 and 2021 NNFCC Biobased Product News Reviews.
Of the companies to showing high levels of activity in 2021, 10
companies featured three or more times in the news reviews (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Top 100 companies featuring three of more times
in 2021 NNFCC Biobased Products News Reviews.
These companies represent a broad range of industrial and market activity
but one theme that ran through many of the announcements was the use of mass
balance approaches to attribute renewable content to products. This is to be
expected from large companies with established product lines, mature supply
chains and considerable capital invested in production facilities. Announced renewable
materials provided through mass balance programmes included polyolefins, polyvinylidene
fluoride, elastomers, and polycarbonates.
Other areas of development included an expansion in biobased
polyethylene production, new investments in biosurfactants, the roll out
biobased ethylene-vinyl acetate and the use of biobased chemicals in textile
applications. Some selected announcements are shown below.
Whether in SMEs or large multinational companies there is evident
interest and increasing activity in the development and supply of biobased
chemicals and materials. Both dedicated production and mass balanced approaches
are being pursued to produce drop-in molecules as well as new to market
molecules such as novel biosurfactants.
How the industry continues to evolve will depend to large extent
on the sustainable feedstock supply, whether for dedicated production or in
mass balanced approaches. Given the considerable scale of the chemical industry
and the demand potential for renewable feedstocks via mass balanced applications
it will be interesting to see what volume of production this approach can achieve.
The regular monitoring of biobased chemical industry
announcements is part of range of activities undertaken by NNFCC to maintain the
knowledge base that underpins our client work in market analysis,
sustainability assessment and, business planning and opportuning appraisal.
[1] ICIS Chemical Business,
3-9 September 2021, accessed 06 July 2022, https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/icis.ada.website.live/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/13164728/ICB_030921_Top-100-Chemical-Companies-pt-1-1.pdf.