Toray and Coca-Cola join forces for PET plant
02/09/2013
A ribbon cutting ceremony was held for Gevo’s demonstration-scale paraxylene plant in Silsbee, Texas, which has been partially funded by Toray, with support for the research and development division provided by Coca-Cola.
"PET is one of the major polymer products for Toray and the completion of this demonstration-scale facility by Gevo is a significant step to evaluate business potential for the fully renewable PET," said Yukichi Deguchi, senior-vice president of the R&D division at Toray.
Gevo and Toray produced fully renewable and recyclable PET fibres and films from isobutanol at laboratory scale in 2011. Toray has also signed an offtake agreement for paraxylene produced at the Silsbee facility. Toray will purchase paraxylene from Gevo and will convert it into PET fibres, textiles and films for scale-up evaluation and market development purposes.
"We believe we have an elegant, viable route to fully-renewable, non-petroleum derived PET and we are pleased that The Coca-Cola Company and Toray have supported this work," said Patrick Gruber, Gevo's chief executive. "Fully renewable PET has the potential to make the world a better place by reducing our dependence on oil and the environmental consequences associated with petroleum based raw materials."
"While the technology to make bio-based materials in a lab has been available for many years, we believe Gevo possesses technologies that have high potential to create it on a global commercial level within the next few years," added Scott Vitters, general manager the PlantBottle Packaging Innovation Platform at Coca-Cola.
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