CARBIOS, a green chemistry company specialising in the recovery of plastic waste and the production of biopolymers, has announced the signing of a ‘strategic partnership’ with Toulouse White Biotechnology Center of Excellence/National Institute for Agricultural Research (TWB/INRA).
The collaborative venture, which has funding of around €600,000 (£424,000), aims to optimise the enzymatic processes developed via CARBIOS’s THANAPLASTÔ project, which itself aims to ‘leverage biological catalysts with exceptional properties and develop and patent innovative technologies for producing, transforming and recycling a broad range of plastic materials’.
The THANAPLASTÔ project has a budget of €22 million (£15.5 million) over five years and involves 60 scientific researchers.
CARBIOS has now entered a new partnership with TWB/INRA in close collaboration with a new research contract with the Regional Center for Innovation and Technology Transfer (CRITT Bio-industries), a department of the Toulouse branch of the National Institute for Scientific Research (INSA).
The joint venture will facilitate the production and purification of enzymes, as well as the purification of monomers generated by the bio-recycling process, so that they can be utilised in the regeneration of the initial monomer. At the end of the pilot work, CARBIOS aims to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of its bioprocesses at the industrial level.
Jean-Claude Lumaret, CEO of CARBIOS, praised the accelerated pace of innovation achieved during three years of collaboration with the TWB, adding: “It is a pleasure to add this new dimension, namely a formal collaboration with CRITT Bio-Industries, to our efforts together, which expands on the applicative and industrial aspects of our joint work. I am encouraged by the progress made on our technologies and confident in the expertise and know-how of the teams involved.”
Founding Director of TWB, Pierre Monsan, hailed the collaboration as a “win-win, public/private partnership”, which will generate, “significant economic gains in the domain of biotechnology”.
These thoughts were echoed by Director of CRITT, Alan Guibert, who highlighted the complementarity of CRITT’s and TWB’s respective areas of expertise, adding: “We will apply all of our know-how and energy with the aim of making CARBIOS’ strategic project evolve into an industrial process in the shortest possible timeframe, and thus demonstrate the efficient management of the project developed by TWB.”
Find out more about CARBIOS.