Futerro lands $12.4M for French PLA biorefinery

In Belgium, Futerro S.A announced the closing of its first fund-raising worth €12 million in preparation for the construction of its new biorefinery in Normandy. In addition to its historical shareholders, Finasucre and Compagnie du Bois Sauvage, Futerro welcomes a new shareholder, Cybelle, whose shareholder is a major player in the packaging sector for the food industry, via the Cedap group.

With the arrival of this new shareholder, Finasucre and Compagnie du Bois Sauvage, Futerro’s longstanding partners, have also each increased their investment in Futerro by €2 million. This new round of financing marks the project’s move up a gear in Saint-Jean-De-Folleville, Normandy. With an estimated total investment of €500 million, the project aims to build Europe’s first fully integrated, circular and sustainable biorefinery. With an annual production of 75,000 tons of PLA combined with its recycling, this project is a world first in the field of bioplastics.

These newly available funds will enable Futerro to finalize the engineering studies, in other words the preliminary design phase. These studies are required before the environmental and construction permits can be filed in the coming months. At the same time, this new capital will enable Futerro to consolidate its presence in existing European markets (food packaging, textile fibers, agricultural films, 3D printing, etc.), as well as in new application sectors currently under development. If Europe’s regulatory ambitions are clear in terms of the resilience, circularity and sustainability of its economy and industry, Futerro is positioned as one of the spearheads of this transition.

Futerro’s historic shareholders are delighted with this new step forward. After an initial pilot project in 2007 and new production capacity of 100,000 tons in Asia to be built by 2020, making Futerro the second largest PLA producer in the world, this European first paves the way for a sustainable transition for the European plastics and chemicals industry.