Sustainea announced this week that it has partnered with Primient to co-locate its planned corn-based monoethylene glycol (MEG) production facility in Lafayette, Indiana. Primient’s Sagamore site in Lafayette will supply the low-carbon dextrose feedstock for the project. Groundbreaking for the greenfield $400 million bio-MEG facility is scheduled to take place following the completion of engineering and the final investment decision, with production anticipated to begin in 2028. The project’s production capacity has not yet been disclosed. Sustainea’s broader bio-MEG strategy includes the construction of three industrial plants with a combined annual production capacity of 700,000 tons of bio-MEG.
Sustainea was established in December 2023 as a joint venture between Braskem, a Brazilian chemical company, and Sojitz, a Japanese trading firm. Since 2017, Braskem has collaborated with Topsøe, a Denmark-based process technology developer, to test sugar-to-glycols technology at a demonstration scale. This partnership utilizes Topsøe’s proprietary MOSAIK™ (MOnoSAccharide IndustrIal Cracker) platform, employing a two-step process to produce MEG through the pyrolysis of glucose followed by hydrogenation. The partnership delivered its first bio-MEG samples in 2020.
Primient, founded in 2022 following Tate & Lyle PLC’s sale of a controlling interest in its Primary Products business in North and Latin America to KPS Capital Partners, LP, became fully owned by KPS in May 2023 after Tate & Lyle sold its remaining 49.7% stake for $350 million. Over the course of the sale, Tate & Lyle secured over $1.5 billion in total proceeds, including dividends. Primient’s portfolio includes industrial starches, sweeteners (glucose, fructose, dextrose, HFCS), animal feed, citric acid, and fuel/industrial ethanol. Primient also supplies sugar feedstock to Primient Covation LLC (CovationBio PDO), which produces 1,3-propanediol at its Loudon, Tennessee facility.
The market for sugar-based MEG is gradually gaining momentum after decades of challenging commercialization, with India Glycols being the sole producer to date. UPM Biochemicals is expected to launch its 220,000 tpa biorefinery in Leuna, Germany, by the end of the year, producing sugar-based MEG, monopropylene glycol (MPG), lignin-based renewable functional fillers, and industrial sugars from woody biomass. A Chinese company is also scaling up its pilot production, and Technip Energies is offering its ethanol-to-MEG process for licensing. In August, Petron Scientech signed an MOU with GAIL (India) Ltd. to jointly explore a 500,000 tpa ethanol-to-ethylene plant with downstream units in India.
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