AFYREN wins major bioeconomy award (in French)

27 February 2020

Press release

AFYREN, the flagship of French BioTech, has designed and developed a breakthrough innovation in green chemistry. Today it has been awarded the Bioeconomy Trophy for the Grand Est region, a prize presented at the Salon de l’Agriculture in the presence of the Minister of Agriculture, Didier GUILLAUME.

The Bioeconomy Awards: showcasing initiatives to transform bioresources

This competition rewards projects based on the actions of companies or industry professionals who transform bioresources in an innovative and sustainable way. The aim of the Bioeconomy Awards is to create value at every link in the chain by replacing fossil carbon with renewable carbon wherever possible.

AFYREN’s challenge is to innovate in order to contribute to a low-carbon, circular bioeconomy.

Today’s everyday consumer products are still too largely made up of molecules derived from oil. Reducing our dependence on oil and our CO 2 emissions also involves our ability to replace these oil derivatives in our everyday products. This is what AFYREN is doing, producing innovative molecules based on natural fermentation technologies to replace the same molecules currently derived from fossil resources.

AFYREN offers its customers bio-based molecules to manufacture the ingredients of tomorrow for a wide range of sectors, including cosmetics, flavours and fragrances, human and animal nutrition, pharmaceuticals and chemicals.

Nicolas SORDET, COE of AFYREN, said: “Our company offers disruptive innovations and intends to play an important role in the transformation of industry as a whole. AFYREN is committed to a low-carbon, circular bioeconomy for itself and its customers.

The next major step for AFYREN is the construction of its first production plant in the Grand-Est region. AFYREN NEOXY is the name of the joint venture between AFYREN and the SPI “Société de Projets Industriels” fund, managed by Bpifrance and underwritten by both the Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir (PIA) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), with an equity investment of around €40 million. Construction of the plant, which is due to start in a few months’ time, will enable the first thousands of tonnes of biobased acids to be offered on the market from 2022, and will create around sixty jobs.