Partners aim for leadership in renewable raw material for PET
Brazilian group Braskem has launched a new joint venture with Japanese trading company Sojitz Corporation. They have called the company they are setting up together Sustainea and have said its focus will be on making, at scale, bio-based monoethylene glycol (bioMEG) and monopropylene glycol (bioMPG).
They have announced ambitions to make Sustainea a global leader in the production of bioMEG to help polymer manufacturers produce renewable PET. They will now go ahead with the construction of three Sustainea industrial plants, which will have an annual production capacity of 700,000 tonnes of renewable MEG. The partners have yet to decide exactly where they will set these plants up, but have said locations in Europe, Brazil, Asia and the US are all in the running. The first of these plants will come on stream in 2026.
Braskem’s director for renewables, Gustavo Sergi, has been named as Sustainea’s chief executive. He said at the time of the launch: “We want to make a positive impact on the polyester market, which is still growing, especially in Asia, and which has strong demand for sustainable and renewable products.”
