Toray Industries (Tokyo / Japan; www.toray.com) and US renewable chemicals company Gevo (Englewood, Colorado; www.gevo.com) have signed an agreement for the supply of renewable bio-paraxylene (bioPX) produced at Gevo’s planned pilot plant to Toray. The agreement will enable the Japanese company to carry out pilot-scale production of fully renewable, bio-based PET and its fibres and films for the first time with samples available for evaluation in 2013.

In July 2011 the companies signed an agreement for the supply of renewable PX sourced from Gevo’s isobutanol – see Plasteurope.com of 05.07.2011. Gevo was the first company in the world to begin commercial production of bio-based isobutanol using proprietary technology and succeeded in the synthesis of bioPX in the laboratory using its isobutanol in conventional chemical processes. Since there is great interest in bioPET from end-users, Gevo is to build a pilot plant for production of bioPX.

Using terephthalic acid synthesised from Gevo’s bioPX and commercially available renewable MEG, Toray succeeded in lab-level PET polymerisation to produce fibres and film samples in 2011. The offtake agreement between the companies will integrate the supply chain and enable the scaling up of the production of bioPET for end users.