Why Better Plastic Doesn’t Win Easily: Bart Langius on PEF, Avantium, and Rebuilding Europe’s Materials Base

Bart: It’s not a matter of if the petrochemical industry is going to leave Europe in the current form, it’s more when. Most materials here around us are also oil-based. Then also for our materials we will have to go to carbon from above the ground.

Mansur: Most of the materials around us are made from oil. Plastics, packaging, textiles, countless everyday products. But what if we could make them from plants instead? My guest today is Bart Langius, Licensing Director at Avantium, a Dutch company developing a new generation of plastics made from sugar instead of fossil feedstocks. In this conversation we talk about the future of the chemical industry, why Europe may need to reinvent how it produces materials and how a new polymer called PEF could change everything from beverage bottles to clothing. I’m Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi and this is Climate Forward. Welcome to the Climate Forward podcast, Bart Langius. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time and for speaking to me today. I will briefly introduce you and then we’ll dive right into our conversation. You go. So, Bart Langius is Director of Licensing and Formerly Commercial Director at Avantium. Avantium is a Dutch pioneer in renewable chemistry whose YXY process, and we’ll explain that later on, enables the production of FDCA and the plant-based polymer PEF, which is now branded as “Releaf”. Let’s start at the beginning, Bart.

Bart: Sure, let’s do.

Mansur: How did you get into the chemical industry? How did that start?

Bart: Yeah, oh wow, yes. Well, maybe it’s more that the chemical industry chose for me than that I chose for the chemical industry because I’m a mechanical engineer amongst chemists for all my life, in fact, or my professional life at least. I studied thermodynamics, in fact, as part of mechanical engineering. But thermodynamics took me into chemical processes and chemical processes took me into polymers and polymers took me into rheology. So somehow, from a more thermodynamic point, I came into the polymer field and never left it after. But it also meant that my career started more in how you apply polymers. So how do you use them and how do you use them well? Then how do you come to polymers or how do you develop or synthesize polymers? So it’s always been more on the application and market side than on the R&D and production side.

Mansur: That makes a lot of sense when we will dive into your career in a second. That explains exactly or very good where your status were. So you studied mechanical engineering and then you ended up at a Dutch company. Correct. As far as I know. Yes, DSM. Yeah. And where did you start at DSM?

Bart: I started at helping customers mainly in automotive, a bit in packaging, to design winning products based on the polypropylene that DSM sold in that time. So I had, let’s say, 10 years in technical roles from technical service to application development to leading the French automotive technical team to technical product management of the compounds of polypropylene innovation roles to bring a new high crystallinity material to the market. And in the end, I was responsible for the R&D group. So in fact, at the age of what was I, 30, heading the R&D group in fact, part of the management team. By then I had finished my MBA, realized I wanted to be broader than just technical and started all over again in a commercial role in Spain. So that’s the first turning point, I think, in my career. After a bit more than 10 years with DSM, I stepped out of a management role and went selling in Spain, Portugal and South Americas. Yeah. So in the same business, but in a completely different role. And that was maybe the first conversion where the task was learn to make relations. You’re smart enough, my then career manager said, you demonstrate it, you can deal with complexity. Now you have to also learn to build relations and build a business based on trust. So that was my years in Spain. Spain is a country of course, with a lot of relations. I remember being introduced to the purchasing director of a large then converter, Diné Mignobel, who said, how do you think this works? And I said, well, we’re both going to puzzle out where are the optimum. We have a lot of competences. You have a lot of competences. Let’s see where the sweet spot is. And he said, no, no, no, that’s not how it goes. First, I’m going to get to know you and then you’re going to get to know me. And then we’re going to see if we can help each other. You help me in your company. I help you in my company. And that’s how we do business. So that was a learning is the first month. Yes.

Mansur: So from the Netherlands to Spain and I mean, which industry is there in Spain to serve?

Bart: Oh, there’s a lot of industry in Spain then and still, of course, a lot has happened in the meantime. But at that time, Spain was in fact, a very important car producing country. All car brands or almost all car brands had factories there. At that time, Spain was in fact, a low cost country. We’re talking late 90s. So also all the converters were there.

Mansur: So sorry. You mentioned converter. I don’t know if everyone knows what a converter is.

Bart: So you had the big car manufacturers there like Opel, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Renault, Nissan, big in Spain, but also their suppliers are there. So the ones who produce the bumpers or the dashboards or the door trims or the interior, they are also all there. The thing was they were driven by cost and that is why they had their own profit and loss. So they were not in fact, they were not a cost center towards the head office like Volkswagen and Wolfsburg or Renault in Paris. They were responsible for their own profit and loss in order to give them that freedom. But that also meant they had their own choices where to source their parts from, but also where to source their materials from. And that meant, and that was the key task for me then. We had a, we were underrepresented in market share. We had a lower price than average in Spain and we wanted to repair that.

Mansur: Okay. So value search a little bit.

Bart: Yes. Well, by innovation and that meant by relation.

Mansur: Good first lesson. Very good. Yeah. We previously quickly discussed a little bit DSM as it was in these two decades, maybe or three decades, it was quite a special company that also produced a lot of, yeah, maybe leaders that you see back at very innovative companies also in the Netherlands and abroad at the moment.

Bart: I think so. I meet a lot of peers. I sometimes say if it’s really innovative and maybe also by that risky, then it’s typical that you will find some people of DSM there.

Mansur: So polypropylene business at DSM automotive industry. But you made a step to another very innovative business as DSM after that.

Bart: Yeah. While I was in Spain, DSM, that was already in the process, but DSM sold that business to Sabik. By the way, last week Sabik sold that business to a German investor company, but that’s 25 years ahead. Let’s go back to 2000 or more or less 2000, 2001. Yeah. I had the luck that I could decide who did I want to join Sabik or did I stay with DSM because I was in fact not on the list of the polypropylene business. I was in the sales office. And there, well, 9-11 happened. Dyneema was a project within DSM, but about to launch itself as a business. And I got an opportunity to join Dyneema and I took that with both hands.

Mansur: And Dyneema is an ultra high molecular weight polyethylene. Maybe you can explain this in a bit more.

Bart: In consumer language, we call it the strongest fiber in the world. And there’s a whole disclaimer on the weight basis and all that, but it’s a very strong, very lightweight fiber. And that makes it very suitable for, well, and that was the business I was driving to in fact stop bullets or catch and then stop bullets. So it’s very much used in, we call that, ballistic applications or to be bullet resistant.

Mansur: I want to make a step back here because I think it may not be immediately obvious that the work in the plastic industry also has a sustainability aspect. Maybe not so obvious, but even when you look at the polypropylene material that’s applied in automotive, I mean, there was a reason why manufacturers were switching to this. There are many different factors, but one of them is of course also it’s lighter than for example, steel or metal components. Am I right? And that brings efficiencies in production and makes things either easier or…

Bart: No, absolutely. I think, well, I mean, in the end, it was, I think the main driver was cost. I mean, when I was in that role as a, how do you call it? As a sales manager, we had Lopez in Volkswagen who was driving large cost reduction programs within the Volkswagen group. So cost was definitely a big driver, but polymers provide that, but there was a lot more happening, right? I mean, bumpers became part of the body panel. So instead of just being a bumper, avoiding the metal work to be dented at a small collision or when you park in your car, it became part of aerodynamics and it became part of pedestrian safety. And so there were way more, let’s say requirements on a bumper than taking a small hit. And that made things like impact resistance expansion. So how to keep it as a smooth surface and how does it fit with the metal work, color, painting of bumpers, it all came in those times. So yes, there were many drivers overall, I would say cost, but many more drivers that took advantage of the liberty that you have in design with polymers over metal. Yes.

Mansur: So that was the polypropylene business. And when we look at the Dyneema, you mentioned primarily the life protection business. That was the start.

Bart: That was my field. Yeah, we worked on everything, of course. We also worked on, in the marine industry, we worked on sports fishing. There are now, I think, genes. I mean, it grow, of course, in all fields, genes that are abrasion resistant, so that protect you for motorcyclists, for example, or cyclists even. Yeah, the field is very diverse, but definitely in that time, in the early years, the law enforcement and defense industry was a very strong growing market because the conflicts were not at the front line anymore. They happened anywhere, as they do now. So yeah, you needed way more protection than just at the front line.

Mansur: Yeah. Yeah, I know, luckily, I have to say maybe, the Dyneema primarily from climbing, where it’s also used in ropes and as a very strong material. Sailing. Sailing, yeah, also there. The Olympic gold medalists all sailed with the Dyneema ropes, as far as I know. So Dyneema, and that brought you to the US, I know that, that you travel, had a lot of work there. So exciting times. But after that, you had another step in DSM, which…

Bart: Again, somebody decided for me that it was time for something else. I didn’t feel so comfortable then, people who know me from that period know that. It really felt bad to say goodbye to the customers. You’re right, I mean, there was a strong focus also on the US. We built up an organization there with, well, with one of our colleagues, very experienced, who was moved there or was expatriate there and really hired a great team. So I was really connected. But yes, maybe also over time, having the relations building under my belt, the next step was to let go of content a bit and learn to trust more on steering the process. Now I say this, this sounds very as if I’ve mastered that fully. I think that’s still one of my challenges every now and then. I still like content and everybody who works with me knows that. So I’m definitely not shy of content, but it was also time to think more structurally about how do you organize things? How do you set up roles and responsibilities? And how do you also give more room to others to grow? And so yeah, at that time, it didn’t feel so comfortable, but I was moved into a consulting role within DSM. It’s very different. I can say so, yes. But in hindsight, a very good move. DSM had developed a program to help businesses to, let’s say, improve their price differentiation and value effect, introduce, as you said, value pricing. Well, short said, the theory came from McKinsey. The deployment came from Boston consultancy. We tested it at a number of units, mainly business units, mainly here in the Netherlands. And it was time to go abroad. The DSM then also had a lot of businesses, of course, outside Europe. And that was the task. So we calibrated the program a bit, made it a bit more short. We call it Turbo. So instead of that it took a year or a year and a half, it took six months. And it meant that we went with a small team, typically fresh graduates. So it was also a great hiring tool. So people from university could immediately travel near front of business units, explain how they could optimize their top line without touching their bottom line, or let’s say without touching their costs. So by that really improving the bottom line. And that has been really, I mean, I thought it would be something for a few years, but it became, I think, what was it, maybe six years? Yeah, something like that. And we had a really great time. It really helped to, how to say, start from a model, think how to sell it. It was a service. It was a kind of a corporate excellence service, but it was not for free. So business units had to pay for it. So that meant that we also had to have a value proposition compelling and convincing and implemented. But it was also a period where that was very much needed. And it was for me the opportunity to see a lot more of the ESM, but also to work, and maybe that was the biggest benefit, to work with the generation that I was not at all used to at that time. By that time, where are we? Let’s say 2004, I was 40. And yeah, my team was, let’s say mid 20s. And that has been a big, a big benefit also in the rest of my life, of course, to see how that works. And those are different considerations, but they’re still fire and they’re still a drive to do good.

Mansur: Yeah. This is also the time from where we know each other, because as a marketing consultant at DSM, you were brought into DSM, Sinochem Pharmaceuticals to help the company get more value for their product. Correct. And this is where, at least from my point of view, for the first time, sustainability really becomes a core topic really explicitly, right, in your career as an objective. Because you were instrumental in setting up the Sustainable Antibiotics Project at DSM, Sinochem Pharmaceuticals. I remember that we did a lot of fundamental, well, step by step. First I remember you were brought in to do a value propositions project and the net promoter score. Yeah. And out of that grew the Sustainable Antibiotics Project.

Bart: Yeah. So that also shows that maybe, let’s say my involvement with DSM’s drive, I would say, for sustainable business was a bit earlier. I mean, that also already was part of the program within the DSM Excellence for Marketing and Sales department, which still is a, I have to call it, the department is not there anymore, but the community is still quite active. But there already, let’s say, as part of value propositioning, as part of Feike’s mission in that time, Feike, Sijbesma CEO, then it was clear that DSM went the road of a company that wanted to be instrumental in improving society. A company cannot succeed in a society that fails. So maybe not so much in the running business improvement that I did, but definitely in the groups that worked on value propositions, understanding trends and defining new business models. They were already very active. And that’s also why, in fact, for me, the step to anti-infectives or DSM-Sinepec pharmaceuticals was a nice move to combine improving the bottom line of the running business with setting up an awareness program around the role of antibiotics in the world, in healthcare, but also in, let’s say, in food and feed, in the animal side, as a very nice extension for my experience.

Mansur: Yeah, it fits well from moved out into this consulting role and now sort of moving back into more a business facing role.

Bart: Yeah. Well, I definitely after six years, that was definitely also one of the things I wanted to go back into the business. I didn’t want to stay in a corporate role in that sense.

Mansur: So sustainable antibiotics, we can, I mean, I don’t think we need to dive too much into it because there’s the current topic or your current work, I would like to discuss much broader, maybe very briefly, just two or three sentences about the sustainable antibiotics project. Maybe you can share a few of these corner stories.

Bart: I remember we worked with an external consultant that kept twisting our heads and that was really, I mean, it felt really uncomfortable to think as an activist. I know Mansur, we had several sessions where we looked at Joakim Bergman and the Australian, Paul Gilding. Yeah. Paul Gilding. But I think they did really well, but it was a mind stretch to look at your company from the outside and think in more activist perspective. And by that also adjust your message. I think that was a lot of fun. And I think we set the basis for a program and a strategy that’s still active and successful. Let’s say for myself, personally, I think the fit with pharma was not so good. I realized in that time that from the business side, I’m a materials guy. In the end there, the mechanical engineer did step up again maybe and less the chemist because I’m not a chemist. And I realized that DSM took a different route. DSM said goodbye to their materials business. So also for me, it didn’t feel well to stay. By then it was 26 years. We moved here to the Hague. We were very happy here. So I decided to take another turn, but this one was decided by me. And that is to go back into the basis of entrepreneurship. I was grown and I don’t want to say that I was a very, how to call it, heavy function, but I was grown to a level where sometimes you lose touch with the basis, your customer, the relation again, maybe also the spark of innovation. So after some months of consideration, I decided to do a combination of consulting, but also helping a startup in getting profitable. And it was a startup in thermoplastic composites. So also with the sustainability message, a circular solution for lightweight structures. And that we did with a very small team, very hands-on talking with your customers, talking with your suppliers, keeping the production up and running. And I loved it. I was completely in a setting where everything fitted together. And that is what I think also helped me very much in my current role that I appreciate how you run a bigger business and what are the strategic considerations and how do you help people thrive, but also that you’re really close with partners, suppliers. And that is what helps innovation in the end, I believe, because the chemical industry is now at a point that I think at least in Europe, the machine is broken. We will be strategically disadvantaged for the coming decades from an energy point of view, from a raw material point of view. And we see it around us. It’s not a matter of if the petrochemical industry is going to leave Europe in the current form, it’s more when in that respect. So we have to change the game and find a new way and in fact use our strategic disadvantage on energy and raw materials to be ready for the next wave. And that means renewable. That’s the conclusion I think I came to. Renewable energy, and we’re quite far in debt, of course. I mean, solar and wind energy is already a very big part of our energy in Europe and in the Netherlands and in Germany. But what also has to follow is the material side. Most materials here around us are also oil-based. So if we want to make the conversion and we want to stop heating the world, we’re touching the 1.5. Last year, I heard this morning formally, then also for our materials, we will have to go to carbon from above the ground. And that is where Avantium is working on.

Mansur: Yeah. And this is now the next step where you’re currently at. I think there’s a lot of macro drivers that influenced or that are in favor of this business at the moment. So today you’re a licensing director for Avantium. First of all, maybe, well, you already explained why Avantium is an attractive company. But please explain in a few words what Avantium does. So we know where in this material business, where in this chemical world the company sits and what it does.

Bart: So Avantium is a technology development company. We develop chemistry that helps the materials industry, the chemical and the material industry to disconnect from the fossil feedstock and use other raw materials than oil to still have the same functionality, quality and cost-effectivity that we’re used to in the chemical world. So it started in 2000, so long ago. It went through several stages, developed and scaled this technology. And at the moment that I joined, which is now six years ago, a bit more, we were at the phase that we grew out of the lab phase. We had a pilot lens running for about 10 years. And we had to bring it to a small industrial level in order to be able to scale it to full industrial level. So yeah, I followed Avantium already for a while. It was a bit in a turmoil with a joint venture and later it broke up with BASF. But when that all settled down, I thought this is the moment to see if I can be part of that team. And that is also maybe in the change from consultancy and a scale up. I did long for colleagues, maybe even bosses and a team. I wanted to have the context of a company again. I liked that a lot, of course, in my DSM time to be part of a team. And that’s why for me, Avantium was a very clear choice. Avantium was ready to scale the technology to industrial level, but it lacked the capital. So we needed additional shareholders and we also needed banks in order to build a plant that could demonstrate that technology at the industrial level. That’s a costly thing. We then anticipated it would be a bit over 100 million euros and it up to be a bit more, but we couldn’t raise that money ourselves. So we had to convince shareholders and banks and they are convinced if you can demonstrate that you have customers, that will say, I will buy that material once you build that plant. So that was the first rule. And in a bit more than a year, we managed to have 50% covered by bankable contracts, as we would call it. And by that, we could start building the plant. To go fast forward, where are we now? 26, the plant is about to start up. It’s partly commissioned. We’re dealing with a number of construction issues, but we will get that solved. And in the course of this year, that plant will start up. In the meantime, that plant is almost fully sold out. So apart from that, we still use that in order to develop further applications for the material and further partnerships. We are now preparing for the next phase and that is where will we build or where will we develop full industrial plants, 100 kiloton plants globally. So back in the US, but also in Asia and also here in Europe.

Mansur: So that’s my role now. But we still need to say what it is that you make. So you have a catalytic process with a bio-based feedstock. Maybe you tell us the feedstock and what the catalytic process makes out of this feedstock.

Bart: So what goes in is fructose. That’s a form of sugar that is available in Europe, in the US and in Asia. And what we make out of it, in fact, is a polymer, a plastic. You could call it a polyester, in fact. And it comes closest currently to what we call the PET bottle, PET.

Mansur: Which everyone knows from your water bottle or soft drinks.

Bart: Yeah, exactly. But there’s also, it’s even wider used in clothing, apparel, but also sports gear, performance clothing in sports. So it’s very widely used. I think the total market for PET is 120 million tonnes globally. And it makes it, I think, the biggest polymer after the polyolefins globally. So after polypropylene and polyethylene. Well, so that’s what comes closest and why a polyester overall is a polymer that can go back to its monomer. So it can go back, it can easily decompose and recompose again. So it can depolymerize and repolymerize, as we call it. So for the non-technical people, it’s easy to recycle. It’s very easy to recycle. Yes. So you have to, if you bring it to melt, so if you heat it up and it’s melting, then you can also build the molecule again, in fact. So where other polymers only break down, like polyolefins, polyesters, in fact, infinitely can keep its property in that sense.

Mansur: Inifinitely.

Bart: Yeah. Theoretically. Yeah, okay. And then, incomes, contamination, and that kind of stuff. So that makes it more difficult. Here in Europe, it’s definitely northwest Europe. We’re sitting on the oldest polyester recycled pool globally because we are recycling PET bottles already for quite a while. That also makes that northwest Europe is an important hub for advanced recycling. So to maybe clean up the pool where needed, but still, mechanical recycling of PET is a very, how to call it, effective way of a circular application.

Mansur: Yeah. Now, I want to go back to the advanced humans and the products. So you said the technology was mature, was ready to, the lab scale worked, it was time to scale up and you were going to look for investors or additional backers to build the pilot plant in the Netherlands. That was the time you joined also, and you were, if I recall this correctly, your main task was securing the bankable contracts, off-tech contracts for the factory. Let’s be a bit more specific here. Which products are we talking about? So it was, we just talked about fructose is the starting material, then there’s some catalytic reaction. Maybe you can also explain this in easy, understandable consumer terms and what comes out at the end.

Bart: It starts with fructose. The core of the process brings that to a monomer, which is called FDCA. For those who know the PET market, that’s the replacement. For the PTA, in PET you have PTA, as a co-molemor we have then FDCA. And then that we polymerize into PEF, like you make PET with the use of, in our case, bio-MEG, bio-MEG, which is the other monomer, and then you have the PEF. So that whole polymer or that whole chain, in fact, is what we license out to the chemical industry. So in fact, we facilitate the chemical industry with the technology that will be proven soon in our flagship plant, in our demonstration plant, using their existing competencies. So they don’t do anything else than what they have always done. So they have always made PTA through an oxidation step, which we provide, but then from sugar instead of from oil. And then they have a polycondensation or a polymerization step, which is not different for PEF or slightly different, but it’s not a different chemistry. It’s not a different know-how. In fact, we even think we can use it in the same plants, a bit depending on which technology that plant is. And then they serve the same customers. So they serve the food and beverage industry, or they serve the apparel or the sporting goods industry. So in fact, we provide an opportunity for the chemical industry, also here in Europe, to switch at least for one of their plants from oil to buying their feedstock from the farmers.

Mansur: Two questions here. So implicitly, you gave the answer already, but why licensing? Why did you not say we are going to build our own production plants and we’re going to step into this market?

Bart: Yeah, two reasons mainly, I think. One is our purpose is, and our mission is, to help the chemical industry to switch from fossil. That is where we go for. That is our mission. So the quickest way to do so is to convince them to switch their feedstock. And to do so, we have to provide the technology. So that’s what we do. We think it’s the quickest way for bio-based materials to scale and to go into the market. Because if we would do it on our own, and we would have to do it out of our own cash flow or by raising additional capital, it will always go, we will be limiting its speed. So by licensing it out and becoming part of the strategy and the financial agenda of the chemical industry, this can go much quicker and we can maybe have a bigger impact. That’s the key reason. The other reason is, yeah, we are a technology development company. If you look at us, we are short of 300 people at the moment. All chemists, mainly, we are not really a company to run big plants. I mean, that’s the whole competence to do it. Of course, we will soon run our demonstration plant or our flagship plant in Delcelle. And that’s about 60 people there who will learn how to run a plant. Absolutely. But it’s a bit different running several plants with hundreds of thousands of people safely, consistently, cost-effectively. We think it’s better that we leave that competence with the chemical industry as it is now, especially because this technology is so close to their background.

Mansur: Yeah. I want to come back to this in a second, but just to give an idea, in terms of size, how big is the pilot plant and how big would a normal PET manufacturing plant be?

Bart: Oh, wow. That’s a bigger gap. That’s quite a gap. Yeah. Maybe now currently all PET plants that are built new are in thousands of kilotons. So you have to think of, I think, 2-3,000 currently, mainly in China. I think there are now plants above 5,000. So that has scaled a lot over the past years. But of course, all polymers have in that sense. Our plant in Delcelle is 5 kilotons. So that’s for 5 to, let’s say, thousands. That’s a big scale. So we have a lot of catching up to do. That is clear. So for us, the next step after the 5 is the 100. So we think the scaling from 5 to 100, the scale factor of 20, is what we do with this flagship plant. The flagship plant is a scaled down version of the 100 kiloton technology.

Mansur: Yeah. So you’re not starting from small to big, but you designed big and then scaled down for another plant. You mentioned it before that you may be able to use your process in an existing plant with smaller adaptations. I would assume you have to do some changes, but in principle, you could reuse an existing production line. Did I understand that correctly? Yes.

Bart: I mean, currently, the polymerization. So in Delcelle, we only make the step from sugar to FDCA to the polymer. The polymer to the polymer. In fact, we do with a partner in Portugal. I mean, we do everything with partners. So it will be a lot of partners in this talk. And that’s an existing PET plant in Portugal where we make PEF.

Mansur: And they don’t care what they throw in at the beginning, if it’s the PET intermediate or your intermediate.

Bart: It does require some process window setting. So some things and very minor, I mean, some more logistical adaptations. But yes. And again, I mean, that will depend. Of course, we chose this one. So it depends a bit on the equipment and the technology choice there is.

Mansur: The reason why I’m asking this is because I want to move towards the brands that you have built up for your PEF material. And I think one of the main advantages, which is that you can fit it into existing recycling streams. Yeah.

Bart: Well, I mean, so in the nomenclature, a PET or PEF, it’s already a small difference. If you look at it chemically, you will hardly note the difference. I mean, yeah, I’m not a chemist. So I find it a small difference. It’s a five ring instead of a six ring. But that small difference gives big differences in the properties of the material. So and that’s where we’re very much helped by the molecule, we often say. It looks a lot like PET and that’s why the comparison with PET is always the easiest. But its main benefit is that it has a very high barrier, as we call it. So it stops oxygen from going into the bottle and it stops CO2 or let’s say the fizz. In beer or in champagne or in the soft drink to go out. And that means that it provides the opportunity either for a much longer shelf life. The vitamins keep fresh or are not oxidized or reduce the weight of the packaging. So in fact, optimize. Thinner bottles. Exactly. Thinner bottles or a thinner film. So that enables us to in fact take a different role than PET. So in fact, we don’t compete with PET at this stage. We can’t, we are more expensive. But we also don’t have to because we are in fact competing with the high barrier materials that are also used in combination with PET. And then the whole thing comes into play that PEF indeed has the same type of chemistry as PET can be recycled in the same assets as PET. And it can even be recycled alongside PET. So if you would have PET with a high barrier where now, for example, Boleate mite is used or an EVOH or maybe a coating on the inside of the bottle. PEF provides a possibility to still have that high barrier in combination with the PET, but still recycle it as a PET and not have the contamination that is involved with the high barrier solutions typically.

Mansur: So it has some material advantages even. Yes. For specific applications.

Bart: No, and especially that’s why we are mostly into food and beverage packaging. That’s where the barrier has a function.

Mansur: So I think I want to move a little bit from the technical aspect of the product into how you’re going to commercialize it now. This is a licensing model. At which stage are you at the moment? And where

Bart: are you standing at the moment? This is going to be an exciting year. So we are now at the point of starting up our plant in Delcelle. That is a very key milestone for us, but also for all our partners. Our downstream partners are waiting to launch the material here in Europe, but also in the US and in Asia. That provides the proof of the technology, but also the proof of market. In the meantime, we’re working now on already finding partners for the next phase. So that is the transition we’re in at the moment. Where are we now?

Mansur: Which is the next stage?

Bart: The next stage would be the 100 kiloton plants. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Mansur: Sorry, but why would you need that plant? Is the 5 kiloton plant not enough? Do you need to demonstrate efficiency at higher scale?

Bart: Well, the 5 kiloton plant does not really move the needle to curb global warming.

Mansur: Now that I understand, but if your goal is that you’re only licensing the product, why would you yourself build a bigger plant?

Bart: No, no, but the idea is not that we build a bigger plant ourselves.

Mansur: Oh, so this would be a move with a licensing partner together? Correct. I didn’t get that earlier. Yeah, sorry. Okay, very clear.

Bart: So the demonstration plant there, the role is to demonstrate the technology and to demonstrate the market. That is an important proof point for potential licensees. They see, of course, the opportunity. They see the problem where they are now when it comes to availability of raw materials and energy. They see this as a potential solution, but there are, of course, still risks involved. And I think maybe a high level, there are maybe two risks mainly. One is this is a new molecule. I don’t see it on the market. Will it really survive? And is it really fit for use? And will I be able to sell it at the price point? And the other risk is, does the technology really work? Does it function at full industrial scale? And therefore, we built a plan. So therefore, customers are looking at that demonstration plan to be operational and to find the products in the shelves, in the shops. So that’s the key thing for us this year. That’s really key.

Mansur: So you have some front runner customers that are willing to take this extra risk with you at the very beginning or invested in the sustainability story also behind the product?

Bart: Yeah, and it’s maybe even more strategic. Let’s say our key partners foresee, like we see now in the chemical industry, they also foresee issues for their products on the long term. Carlsberg is maybe a good example. For sees that the world will be short of glass with energy prices so high and no additional glass capacity coming to market. They have to find other formats to sell their products. So they are much more on the long term and think, OK, how do we avoid that future generation think that you can only drink beer from glass, right? So they have a way longer term vision where they are now testing their formats also with our, let’s say, flagship plant material in order to validate also for them their future views when it comes to packaging. And the same goes for retailers like here in Holland, Albert Hain or cosmetic companies like LVMH. They all have this as a strategic avenue for the coming decades. But they also want to see this come into reality. So in fact, they want to test it through our flagship plant, but they want to scale it preferably by 2030 so that it still impacts also their strategy on the relatively short term. So for that, we need 100 kiloton plants globally. So we really start making an impact because only with with and we cannot scale it further at this moment than maybe 100 or 150 kilotons. But yeah, as I said, we still have a way to go to get to the thousands of kilotons where the petrochemical industry is now mainly in Asia.

Mansur: The last topic I want to touch is also the most recent, I think, a visible one. That is you are building up a consumer facing ingredient brand for your product. Called Releaf. Why are you doing this?

Bart: Yeah. Well, we realized that as a Avantium, we really speak to the industry, but that’s not what will bring the success in the end from an adoption point of view in the market. And what we saw was that we absolutely also have to speak the language of the consumers. And therefore we needed a language where we would be complimentary to the brands, where brands would even be happy to embrace the material, not for the molecule, but for its performance and what it does in the circular economy. And therefore we decided to have a different channel effect using consumer language, talking to consumers, but by that also have a way better value proposition to brands and retailers.

Mansur: And if you look at Releaf, what would success look in five years for you, for the brand?

Bart: In five years? Well, I mean, let’s say in one or two years, it would mean that we see the first products on the shelves and T-shirts on the hangers, as we say it, with a Releaf ingredient brand in it. Still, of course, the key brand will be prominent, which is also clear.

Mansur: Make you think a little bit about the Dyneema story, right? It’s the same. So if I buy climbing gear, I buy the climbing brand, but it does say made with Dyneema.

Bart: It does have a small label of confidence. Yeah, exactly. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. Well, that’s more or less what we’re doing with Releaf as well. We don’t want to contribute to the overall brand and give confidence to the consumer that this is a conscious choice, right? That is a choice where you contribute to the solution and not to the problem.

Mansur: So in one to two years, what do we want to see? First products on the shelves. So yeah, here in the Albert Heijn. What would I have to look out for? Is it beer or mineral water?

Bart: I think in Albert Heijn, it’s mainly in fruit juices. They contain vitamins, living, or let’s say vitamins that are very perishable under oxygen. So that’s why their Releaf has a functional role. It keeps the vitamins in so it’s healthier or it extends the shelf life. Albert Heijn has decided to also draw it broader, also into their poker balls or in salad packaging. So maybe even where the barrier is not so much needed, but just for the conscious choice of a renewable material. But you can also think of cosmetic packaging from a few of the brands from LVMH. I think Dior has been vocal about it recently as well. I think of here in Europe, Carlsberg, who is very active in their packaging strategy. Not all our partners are public yet because these are consumer brands and they don’t want to steal their own thunder by not following up immediately with products that consumers can buy. But yeah, we are also in Japan, a number of beer brewing companies, larger brands that will launch a product.

Mansur: Cool. And one or two years is very nearby. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Absolutely. So I think we’ve covered a lot and we’ve come sort of now we’ve come to an end here. Is there something that you still want to add or is there a message that you want to that you want our listeners to remember?

Bart: Yeah, we talked a lot about me maybe here, but and then of course that is made. But it’s clear that I said I wanted to join a Avantium to be part of a team. And that is something that that that I also want to emphasize. I mean, it’s not all just Bart here. I mean, we started with a small team six years ago. It has grown in all kind of directions. We added competences. We are had the branding. We now are way more active in advocacy at the European level. We learned how to license some some products of us. And so the end is also where we started it. I think what I see now that I’m touching 62, I think, this year is that the the journey that I had and the journey that you can make as a team is so compelling and is also so giving you all the energy to do everything it takes to have the freedom to do what it takes, as we called it at that time. And that is also, I think, for everybody in a very important source of energy and joy in a professional life. Make sure you you you you are critical to yourself. You stay hungry, stay curious and maybe a little bit insecurity. That’s not too bad either. Because and listen to advice is from the outside, because in the end, that personal growth and the growth you can make as a team makes every challenge really bridgeable. I’m I have a lot of confidence in in in people. And yes, we create a lot of problems, but we can also solve it. And I do think being a mechanical engineer, that chemists are at the heart of innovation and that they can really be part of the solution and all the challenges that this world is looking for it, looking at at the moment.

Mansur: But this is a great closing word. So all that’s left for me to say is thank you very much for joining me today here for this talk. I really enjoyed our conversation. And I wish you all the success for the coming months and years. And I’ll be closely watching what happens with Avantium in Releaf. Stay close.

Bart: Yes. Thank you.

Mansur: That was Bart Langius from Avantium. We covered a lot of ground from the evolution of the materials industry to the challenge of replacing fossil feedstocks. But if there’s one thing I hope you take away, it’s this. The transition to a climate neutral economy isn’t only about energy. It’s also about materials because the world doesn’t just run on energy. It’s built from materials and companies like Avantium are starting to show that those materials can be made differently. If you like this conversation, follow Climate Forward on your favorite podcast app. And if you’re already listening regularly, thank you for being part of this community. See you next time on Climate Forward.