Carbios strengthens its strategic and historical partnership with TWB (INRA)

CARBIOS (Alternext Paris : ALCRB), an innovative green chemistry company specializing in breakthrough technologies dedicated to the recovery of plastic waste and the production of bio-polymers, announced today that is has signed a strategic partnership with TWB/INRA (Toulouse White Biotechnology Center of Excellence/National Institute for Agricultural Research) for the pre-industrial demonstration in a public/private venture, recognized by the Carnot 3BCAR Institute.  The work is being developed in close collaboration with the CRITT Bio-industries (Regional Center for Innovation and Technology Transfer), a department of the Toulouse branch of INSA (National Institute for Scientific Research) within the framework of a new research contract.

The significant progress made by the academic teams involved in the THANAPLASTTM project, such as TWB and INRA,  and the results obtained via these collaborative activities, have allowed CARBIOS to accelerate the pre-industrial development of its bioprocesses.  Within this context, CARBIOS wishes to strengthen its collaboration with the Toulouse teams at TWB (INRA) and the CRITT (INSA).  The CARBIOS and CRITT/TWB teams will work jointly at the Toulouse site to optimize the enzymatic processes, the common bioprocess platform developed by CARBIOS via the THANAPLAST^TM project.  The sharing of expertise by the teams will allow for faster development in this phase of the project.

In the CRITT’s pre-industrial development framework, this collaboration will allow for the production and the purification of enzymes.  It will also allow for the purification of the monomers generated by the de-polymerization (bio-recycling process) in order for them to be used in the regeneration of the initial monomer. At the conclusion of this pilot work, CARBIOS will be in a position to prove the effectiveness of its bioprocesses at the industrial demonstration scale.

Jean-Claude Lumaret, CEO of CARBIOS, stated, “In our three years of collaboration with TWB, the partnerships we have entered into have clearly contributed to accelerating innovation, and have delivered remarkable results.  It is a pleasure to add this new dimension, namely a formal collaboration with CRITT Bio-Industries, to our efforts together, which expands on the applicative and industrial aspects of our joint work.  I am encouraged by the progress made on our technologies and confident in the expertise and know-how of the teams involved.”

Pierre Monsan, Founding Director of TWB, said, “The TWB-CARBIOS collaboration is exemplary as a win-win, public/private partnership and the scientific progress which will lead to significant economic gains in the domain of industrial biotechnology.  Through this new partnership, we will put everything in place to continue to contribute efficiently to CARBIOS’ involvement in the development of new and innovative ecological processes that provide alternatives to conventional chemistry methods, allowing for the optimization of the life cycle of plastics.”

Alain Guibert, Director of CRITT Bio-Industries stated, “The participation of CRITT Bio-Industries in this competitive research contract concretely and pragmatically demonstrates the complementarity of the respective involvements of TWB and CRITT, each in its respective domain of expertise.  We will apply all of our know-how and energy with the aim of making CARBIOS’ strategic project evolve into an industrial process in the shortest possible timeframe, and thus demonstrate the efficient management of the project developed by TWB.”

This partnership, with funding of almost €600,000 builds on THANAPLAST^TM, a project that brings together 60 scientific researchers, and that has a budget of €22 million over five years.  This project, which is at the heart of CARBIOS’ activities to date, includes €9.6 million in support from OSEO (the innovation arm of France’s Bpifrance development bank) within its ISI project (strategic innovation for industry) assistance program.  CARBIOS, the founder and lead manager of this strategic project, has been allocated €15 million, the largest portion of the budget, and will receive funding of €6.8 million from OSEO out of the €9.6 million allocated to the THANAPLAST^TM project.

About TWB

Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB) is a pre-industrial demonstrator focused on accelerating developments in industrial biotechnology by promoting exchanges between public research and industry. It aims to develop a bioeconomy, based on the use of renewable carbon, in the field of chemistry, materials and energy. TWB has developed for its partners and companies, 7 state of the art technical platforms, whereof two are dedicated to ethic and life cycle assessment of the projects. Different types of collaborative research and development projects are proposed, as well as customized service solutions for companies.

Award-winner of “Investissement d’Avenir” call (March 2011), TWB has been granted by the French National Research Agency (ANR). TWB is a Joint Service Unit managed by INRA, for the public organizations INRA/INSA/CNRS.

For more information: www.toulouse-white-biotechnology.com

TWB Contacts:

Véronique Paquet                                                                      Bénédicte Robert

Director of External Relations                                                 Press Relations

+33 (0)6 73 48 13 84                                                                 +33 (0)6 07 54 76 64

paquet@insa-toulouse.fr                                                        benedicte.robertcss@gmail.com