US renewable chemicals company Gevo (Englewood, Colorado; www.gevo.com) says it has successfully produced fully renewable and recyclable PET for potential customer Toray Industries (Tokyo / Japan; www.toray.com). The announcement comes a little more than a year after the two companies signed a non-binding letter of interest for the future supply of renewable paraxylene sourced from Gevo’s isobutanol starting in 2012.

After generating paraxylene from its isobutanol, Gevo sent the material to Toray, which then converted it into biobased PET articles using both its existing technology and a new method developed in cooperation with the Englewood-based company. Using this paraxylene and mono ethylene glycol (MEG), Toray was able to produce fully renewable PET.

The two companies announced that the next step is to move from laboratory-scale production to commercial-scale operations.