I am still working on my presentation for the ICIS World Chemical Purchasing Summit and the deadline is this Friday (yikes!). Goodluck to me!

Meanwhile, the blog still has a lot of catching-up to do with several news from the past two weeks especially concerning biofuels. The blog will try to do a big biofuel news roundup for those. In the meantime, here’s an interesting news that came out from Gevo this morning.

Gevo said it has opened its demonstration-scale biobased paraxylene plant in Silsbee, Texas, adjacent to Gevo’s existing jet fuel plant. Gevo’s current bio-PX partners Coca-Cola and Toray Industries participated in the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Gevo said Toray provided funding assistance for the construction of the bio-PX plant. Toray has also signed an off-take deal for PX produced at the Silsbee facility. The company will purchase PX from Gevo and will convert it into PET fibers, textiles and films for scale-up evaluation and market development purposes.

“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, Member of the Board, and General Manager of the R&D division at Toray.

The demo facility is owned and operated by South Hampton Resources (SHR) owned by Arabian American Development Co. (ARSD). SHR provides the toll-processing services for the facility, which can manufacture up to 16,000 pounds per month of mixed octane materials produced on the existing bio-isobutanol-to-jet fuel demonstration unit.

Gevo has contracted the bio-PX facility for a year and a half with one-year extensions available thereafter. SHR will incur incidental costs related to site preparations and tie-ins.