Elevance's inches closer to start Natchez biorefinery in US

Elevance Renewable Sciences Inc, a high-growth specialty chemicals company, announced on October 22, 2013, that it has authorised the next significant stage of its second world-scale biorefinery in Natchez, Mississippi, in order to expand production of its Inherent renewable building blocks in 2016. The decision is based on the successful start-up and operation of Elevance’s first world-scale joint venture biorefinery in Asia, as well as robust customer activity and demand forecasts for the company’s specialty and intermediate chemicals.
 
Elevance is the only specialty chemicals company that will have two world-scale biorefineries in operation by 2016. The Natchez project, which involves investment of approximately $30 million, will be the second biorefinery based on Elevance’s proprietary metathesis technology. Elevance announced commercial shipments from the company’s first biorefinery, a 180,000 MT joint venture with Wilmar International Limited located in Gresik, Indonesia, earlier this year.
 
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The Natchez biorefinery will initially operate using canola or soybean oil; the Gresik biorefinery is now operating on palm oil. Both plants are capable of running on multiple renewable oil feedstocks, including jatropha or algal oils when they become commercially available.
 
At the Natchez site, Elevance has tripled the production of the existing operations there; and transformed the existing operations from batch to continuous operations. It has also begun site preparation for biorefinery construction, including the removal of obsolete equipment and structures that has resulted in savings of more than $1 million compared to initial project estimates.
 
The commercial-scale manufacturing facility in Natchez will produce novel specialty chemicals, including multifunctional esters such as 9-decenoic methyl ester; a unique distribution of bio-based alpha and internal olefins including decene; and a premium mixture of oleochemicals. It will have a capacity of 280,000 MT (approximately 617 million pounds).
 
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The high-value performance specialty chemicals, olefins and oleochemicals produced at the company’s biorefineries will be used in personal care products, detergents and cleaners, lubricants and additives, engineered polymers, and other specialty chemicals markets.
 
“Our current customer forecasts for Inherent renewable building blocks call for demand to exceed Gresik’s capacity. With commercial production underway at Gresik, customer activity continues to increase in each of our market platforms. By building biorefineries in multiple geographies, we are able to meet customer demand for better-performing, cost-competitive renewable alternatives to petrochemicals across multiple industries. We will also be providing our customers the added security of two world-scale commercial plants with diversified feedstock supply chains,” said K’Lynne Johnson, CEO, Elevance.