Afyren, a young French biochemicals company, is pressing ahead with plans for industrial scale production of bio-based organic acids from recovered non-food biomass through a fermentation process.

The Clermont Ferrand-based company said the investment decision was taken after it completed the prerequisites for commercial production, raising €60 million for the project from several sources, including a €21 million equity increase.

Afyren possesses “good pre-industrial phase technology that we have been working on for several years and that has enabled us to deliver test batches to our first customers,” said CEO Nicolas Sordet.  “Our bio-based products are already generating strong interest among leading businesses, and we are moving into the industrialization phase with confidence and enthusiasm.”

The firm’s proprietary technology is said to enable production of organic building blocks previously obtained almost exclusively from petroleum products, using different types of agriculture-industry products “without competing with the food production chain and without generating waste.”

The circular production technology transforms various types of biomass into seven different organic acids. Thanks to the organic acids’ levels of purity and their natural characteristics, Afyren said it is able to “target markets that require very high standards of quality, from cosmetics to flavors and fragrances, human and animal nutrition, and even fine chemicals.”

Founder Jérémy Pessiot said Afyren’s technology is “fundamentally linked to its ability to combine ecology and economic performance.” Its renewable production process using fermentation and downstream proprietary technologies was scaled up during seven years of research and development.

The biochemicals specialist, established in 2012 and currently employing  15 people at its sites in in Clermont-Ferrand and Lyon, has won several sustainability prizes. Afyrensaid it will release further details on its financing plan and the creation of an industrial subsidiary in the coming weeks.

The company’s development is being supported by the Auvergne Regional Council, Bpifrance, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME).