The Renew­able Mater­i­als Con­fer­ence Hits the Mark Again

Hürth, 18 June 2024: Over three days, 440 par­ti­cipants from 26 coun­tries met, rep­res­ent­ing lead­ing brand man­u­fac­tur­ers, chem­ic­al and mater­i­al com­pan­ies, as well as the European Com­mis­sion – DG Grow, Clima, Envir­on­ment and RTD – and the Dutch and Ger­man gov­ern­ments. As in pre­vi­ous years, par­ti­cipants were extremely sat­is­fied: High-qual­ity, cut­ting-edge con­tent in the 80 present­a­tions, in-depth dis­cus­sions in ten work­shops, an exhib­i­tion, the elec­tion of the ​“Renew­able Mater­i­al of the Year 2024”, extens­ive net­work­ing oppor­tun­it­ies dur­ing the con­fer­ence and the three even­ing events, an over­all pro­fes­sion­al and enjoy­able atmo­sphere (“spe­cial spir­it”) – right down to a tra­di­tion­al car­ni­val dance show from the region as a big sur­prise at the even­ing buffet. 

The event’s plat­in­um spon­sor was UPM of Fin­land, which oper­ates Europe’s first new biore­finery in Leuna, Germany. 

Mes­sages from the conference

Speak­ers high­lighted the import­ance of mov­ing to sus­tain­able and renew­able mater­i­als and the need to tackle Scope 3 emis­sions. The momentum for LCA and car­bon foot­prints is now: ​“Meas­ure what you treas­ure” (Ivana Krkljus, BASF).

Industry is on the verge of a major trans­form­a­tion, and the dif­fer­ent cor­por­ate strategies are united by a clear com­mit­ment to bio- and CO₂-based solu­tions, com­bined with recyc­ling, to keep car­bon in the cycle and remove all fossil car­bon from the ground in the long term. The future indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion will have to be com­pletely redesigned to meet new chal­lenges: ​“Biod­iversity equals robust­ness equals resi­li­ence – resi­li­ence and adapt­ab­il­ity will become more import­ant than effi­ciency” (Lars Bör­ger, industry insider).

The con­fer­ence show­cased a wide range of new products and facil­it­ies, many of which were only made pos­sible through col­lab­or­a­tion along the value chain. On the one hand, the con­fer­ence focused on typ­ic­al pet­ro­chem­ic­al build­ing blocks such as naph­tha or ethyl­ene, which are now also pro­duced using bio­mass, CO₂, pyro­lys­is or gas­i­fic­a­tion. On the oth­er hand, there are com­pletely new solu­tions such as fillers from lignin, gluc­o­poly­mers or polyoil and PUR from rape­seed oil. There are many new renew­able routes, espe­cially for fine chem­ic­als, per­son­al care, coat­ings and adhes­ives or new premi­um qual­ity snack pack­aging that con­tains 50 % recycled plastic and meets strin­gent food con­tact requirements.

A recur­ring theme in the present­a­tions was that, unlike the US or China, Europe cur­rently lacks an appro­pri­ate policy frame­work to sup­port the trans­ition to renew­able car­bon in the chem­ic­als and mater­i­als sec­tor. Two work­shops dis­cussed what instru­ments the EU should have at its dis­pos­al to trans­form the chem­ic­al industry while main­tain­ing its com­pet­it­ive­ness. Many ideas and impulses now need to be fur­ther developed.

Although bio­de­grad­a­tion is not a major issue in Europe, unlike China or oth­er Asi­an coun­tries, key meth­ods for under­stand­ing bio­de­grad­a­tion are now estab­lished. For the first time, the fate of car­bon in a bio­de­grad­able poly­mer can be tracked very pre­cisely using iso­tope-labelled poly­mers to show that the car­bon ends up as CO₂ and in micro­bi­al bio­mass. A new tech­nique using fluor­es­cently labelled mater­i­als can also prove once and for all that cer­ti­fied com­postable mater­i­als leave no micro­plastics behind. These advances in the sci­entif­ic under­stand­ing of bio­de­grad­a­tion will be used to pre­pare future reg­u­la­tions to imple­ment the oblig­a­tion to use bio­de­grad­able mater­i­als in rel­ev­ant applic­a­tions that end up in the environment.

Innov­a­tion Award ​“Renew­able Mater­i­al of the Year 2024”

For the fourth time, the innov­a­tion award ​“Renew­able Mater­i­al of the Year” was gran­ted for the devel­op­ment of new tech­no­lo­gies and applic­a­tions, which com­bines all renew­able mater­i­al solu­tions in one com­pet­i­tion – from bio­mass and CO₂ util­isa­tion to recyc­ling. Six innov­a­tions were nom­in­ated by a pan­el of experts from 38 sub­mis­sions. After 10-minute present­a­tions by the nom­in­ees, the par­ti­cipants chose the win­ner. The innov­a­tion award was organ­ised by the nova-Insti­tute and sponsored by Cov­estro (Ger­many). The three win­ners in detail:

First Place

Again (Den­mark): Acet­ic Acid and Oth­er Chem­ic­als Derived from CO₂

By com­bin­ing mil­len­nia-old bac­teria with cut­ting-edge bio­tech­no­logy, Again fer­ments waste CO₂ emis­sions dir­ectly from flue gas into CO₂-derived base chem­ic­als such as acet­ic acid. Its nov­el bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess cap­tures unavoid­able car­bon emis­sions from industry and reuses them to pro­duce valu­able base chem­ic­als for which there are cur­rently few or no green altern­at­ives, help­ing to defos­sil­ise some of the world’s most chal­len­ging value chains. This bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess rep­res­ents a paradigm shift, elim­in­at­ing the need for energy and cost-intens­ive CO₂ cap­ture and puri­fic­a­tion. More inform­a­tion: https://again.bio

Ida Rask Kongs­gaard, Again: ​”We are hon­oured to be awar­ded ​‘Renew­able Mater­i­al of the Year 2024’ amongst an inspir­ing line-up of nom­in­ees at this year’s Renew­able Mater­i­als Con­fer­ence. A big thanks to our off taker HELM (Ger­many), who have been a pivotal sup­port in our com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion jour­ney. We are excited to bring our products to the mar­ket togeth­er and to start defin­ing the new nor­mal for a green­er chem­ic­al industry.”

Second Place

Reselo (Sweden): Rub­ber Made from 100 % Birch Bark

Reselo addresses the need for altern­at­ive fossil-free rub­ber poly­mers driv­en by extern­al and intern­al pres­sures across the rub­ber industry. Redu­cing the cli­mate impact of mater­i­als is a pri­or­ity, but so far there has been little innov­a­tion in more sus­tain­able solu­tions, espe­cially in the rub­ber seg­ment. Reselo Rub­ber is there­fore very attract­ive as it is 100 % made from birch bark, a waste stream from the forest industry. The poly­mer can be pro­cessed in exist­ing equip­ment and is com­pat­ible with cur­rent vul­can­isa­tion sys­tems, elast­omers and addit­ives. Reselo Rub­ber is cur­rently being used in a num­ber of applic­a­tions in col­lab­or­a­tion with glob­al com­pan­ies to bring more sus­tain­able products to the mar­ket. More inform­a­tion: https://​reselo​.se/

Josefin Larsson, Reselo: ​“Being recog­nized as the top three ​‘Renew­able Mater­i­als of the Year 2024’ by industry peers is an achieve­ment we are very proud of and encour­age us on our jour­ney. More import­antly, it is a test­a­ment to the need of wel­com­ing new cat­egor­ies of mater­i­als from dif­fer­ent bio-based resources to ulti­mately defos­sil­ise the rub­ber and plastic industry.“

Third Place

VAUDE Sport (Ger­many): First‐​ever Wood‐​based Poly­es­ter Tex­tile Product

Until now, recycled PET has been favoured for tex­tiles, but cri­ti­cism is grow­ing over qual­ity con­cerns. With this first mile­stone, VAUDE, in cooper­a­tion with UPM (Fin­land), demon­strates the feas­ib­il­ity of tap­ping new European bio-based sources. The MEG in this demon­strat­or is made from wood residues and is inten­ded as a drop-in solu­tion without com­prom­ising on qual­ity. The goal for the com­mer­cial ver­sion is a 100 % bio-based solu­tion, which con­tains, besides bio-based MEG, fully bio-based pur­i­fied tere­ph­thal­ic acid (PTA). VAUDE is demon­strat­ing a scal­able com­mer­cial approach to renew­able PET and shows what such a solu­tion could entail. More inform­a­tion: https://​vaude​.com

René Beth­mann, VAUDE Sport: ​“We are thrilled to have won third prize. This achieve­ment once again under­scores the import­ance of col­lab­or­a­tion along the entire value chain and high­lights that we can only achieve a sus­tain­able trans­form­a­tion together.“

Thanks to RMC Sponsors

The nova-Insti­tute would like to thank UPM Bio­chem­ic­als (FI) for sup­port­ing the con­fer­ence as Plat­in Spon­sor, IFF (US), NESTE (FI), TÜV Aus­tria Bel­gi­um (BE), Sug­ar Energy (CN), Zhongke Guosheng Tech­no­logy (CN) as Gold Spon­sors, as well as Alfa Lav­al (SE), B4Plastics (BE), RED­cert (DE), Ren­olit and Photan­ol (DE) and Total Cor­bion (NL) who sup­port the event as Sil­ver Spon­sors. The innov­a­tion award ​“Renew­able Mater­i­al of the Year 2024” is sponsored by Cov­estro (DE).

Part­ner

The Renew­able Mater­i­als Con­fer­ence is sup­por­ted by industry and trade asso­ci­ations, non-profit organ­isa­tions, research insti­tu­tions and interest groups that are them­at­ic­ally linked to the con­fer­ence: AVK — Fed­er­a­tion of Rein­forced Plastics (DE), BCNP Con­sult­ants (DE), B4C – Bioeconomy For Change (FR), bünd­nis mik­roplastikfrei (AT), C.A.R.M.E.N. (DE), Chem­Co­logne (DE), Chemie-Cluster Bay­ern (DE), CLIB – Cluster indus­tri­elle Bio­tech­no­lo­gie (DE), CO2Value Europe (EU), CSCP – Col­lab­or­at­ing Centre on Sus­tain­able Con­sump­tion and Pro­duc­tion (DE), Enter­prise Europe Net­work – Zen­it (DE), European Bioplastics (EU), FNR — Facha­gen­tur Nachwach­sende Rohstoffe (DE), GO!PHA – Glob­al Organ­iz­a­tion for PHA (Inter­na­tion­al), IBB – Indus­tri­elle Bio­tech­no­lo­gie Bay­ern Net­zwerk (DE), ITA – Insti­tut für Tex­til­tech­nik der RWTH Aachen (DE), kun­st­stof­f­land NRW (DE), NRW.Energy4Climate – Landes­gesell­schaft für Ener­gie und Kli­mas­chutz (DE), ÖGUT – Öster­reichis­che Gesell­schaft für Umwelt und Tech­nik (AT), Plastics Europe (DE) und Renew­able Car­bon Ini­ti­at­ive (Inter­na­tion­al).