Article: Moving from a linear model to a regenerative circular economy

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AFYREN has designed and developed a technology to manufacture biobased ingredients that are innovative, sustainable and efficient solutions for sectors including food, feed, aromas and perfumes, lubricants, material sciences, and life sciences. These biomolecules, a family of 7 natural organic acids, are derived from the revalorization of non-food biomass and will be available on an industrial scale and at a competitive cost, offering the same chemical properties as those produced from petroleum derivatives, but with only one-fifth of the carbon footprint.

“When we created AFYREN, the objective was to provide a sustainable and competitive alternative to petro-sourced molecules used by many industries,” explains Jérémy Pessiot Managing Director and Founder of AFYREN. “From a production standpoint, the fermentation technology we designed can work with different feedstocks such as beet or corn. We made the strong choice to use agro-industry co-products, in order to enter into a complete circular bioeconomy model. All the strategic choices we made for AFYREN were made based on this objective — to solve the equation of business efficiency and lowest environmental impact.”


Raw materials are not only renewable, they are agricultural by-products. The choice to use by-products was mainly made in order not to compete with agricultural land intended for human food. To minimize its impact on the planet as much as possible, Afyren uses by-products that are renewable from one agricultural season to the next.

– All products generated by the Afyren process are valorized and/or recycled: in addition to the seven organic acids produced, a fermentation residue is formed and returned to the soil as fertilizer (useable in organic farming) to reproduce a biomass production cycle. Consequently, no industrial waste is generated in this process.

– The manufacturing process consumes water in a controlled manner thanks to a water recycling system used during the fermentation phase. The process requires very little water as it operates in a closed loop and maximizes the water present in the biomass used as raw material.

Last but not least, AFYREN is supplied with local or regional renewable raw materials (within a few hundred kilometers); its first plant is located in the North East of France, at the epicenter of sugar beet production, and close to its potential customers in Germany, France and the Benelux.

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