Germany’s CropEnergies has given the go-ahead for its proposed renewable ethyl acetate plant to be built at the Zeitz Chemical and Industrial Park in Elseraue. Total investment will be between €120-130 million, paid from the company’s cash reserves.

Detailed and construction engineering is currently underway with groundbreaking scheduled to take place in early 2024. Commissioning is due for summer 2025 at the latest. The facility will use technology from Johnson Matthey, for which  an agreement was signed in January. The engineering partner for construction will be Belgium’s De Smet Engineers & Contractors.

According to CropEnergies, the 50,000 t/y plant will be the first of its kind in Europe, producing renewable ethyl acetate from sustainable ethanol using renewable energy. “Renewable ethyl acetate is a sustainable alternative to fossil products and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. The project aims to be profitable within two to three years after commissioning,” said CEO Stephan Meeder.

Ethyl acetate is widely used in the production of flexible packaging and coatings, paints and adhesives, as well as in food, beverage, cosmetics and pharmaceutical applications.

The plant will also generate renewable hydrogen as a co-product, which together with biogenic CO₂ from the CropEnergies fermentation process, can be the basis for further conversion of renewable energy into Power-to-X downstream routes to produce efuels, for example.

The Mannheim-based group added that the facility will also be the foundation of its new biobased chemicals business, marking the next step in its diversification into new markets. In 2021, CropEnergies began a program of strategically realigning its portfolio, with a focus on defossilization.

As part of that diversification, the company has made several investments this year. These include paying about €2 million in June for a 20% stake in LXP Group, a German biotech startup that has developed a process for digesting lignocellular biomass, which can be used to produce advanced biofuels and biobased chemicals.

In September, CropEnergies took a 25% share in German renewable energy startup East Energy and spent €1.8 million on a 50% stake in Syclus, a Dutch startup for bio-based chemicals. Together with Syclus, CropEnergies aims to build an industrial-scale plant for the production of renewable ethylene from renewable ethanol.

Syclus will work out the technical and economic viability of producing renewable ethylene at the Chemelot Industrial Park in Geleen, the Netherlands. CropEnergies said discussions with potential clients will be deepened and assuming a positive result, basic engineering is scheduled to start in late 2023. Plant capacity would be in the range of 100,000 t/y, with production starting in 2026.

Author: Elaine Burridge, Freelance Journalist