Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FibreCarb (“World’s first techno-economic viable recycling technology for waste woodboards”)
Berichtszeitraum: 2017-12-01 bis 2018-05-31
Mankind uses wood as a raw material since the stone age. It has been perceived to be an abundantly available even renewable resource, it literally grows everywhere and people have a natural tendency to implement wood for their everyday use in many ways. Nevertheless, recently, demand for wood and wood-based products are significant increasing, not only for reaching the renewable energy target but also for bio-products for biorefineries. Unfortunately, many of these products have become nowadays commodity products with “short” lifespans without a recycling solution. Act&Sorb is dedicated to the development and commercialisation of an innovative upcycling technologies to transform waste streams, originating in large amounts from commodity products and today still ending in landfills or waste incinerators, into high value products for growing markets. The innovative FibreCarb-process is Act&Sorb’s first commercial market entry, turning fibreboard waste into high value nitrogenised activated carbon, used in large scale for e.g. air- or water purification, pharmaceuticals and food industry. The main goal of our SMEInst-1-11-2016 project, was to write a comprehensive, sound business strategy and commercial plan for the FibreCarb innovation
To achieve our goal, Act&Sorb identified and tackled several objectives divided in 3 work segments during this project. During the first segment the product-market fit is assessed in more detail. During the second segment the needed demonstration activities to reach the early adopters and evaluation of suited locations to set-up own FibreCarb facilities where investigated. In the third segment the financial viability of the business plan by determining the factors in which situation licensing, joint venture or choosing for an own installation is best is evaluated. Dissemination of the obtained results is foreseen after financial with investors. The developed marketing strategy is aimed to maximise reaching the user and stakeholder community and its influences by 2020.
Based on the obtained results, the FibreCarb idea is now ready for commercial demonstration and commercial roll-out disrupting the activated carbon market by the sustainability and energy efficiency of its products and production process in comparison with standard production strategies. To achieve this, Act&Sorb plans to commission it’s the first commercial recycling facility 2021 saving 100 000 trees, 50 ktonnes of CO2-emissions and recycling 50 000 tonnes of fibreboard waste a year. To further grow and accelerate, Act&Sorb will set-up new own plants, sell plants for a license fee and a lump sum. In a later stage this will be followed by licensing the technology with service contracts. In addition, Act&Sorb will further broaden and accelerate its specialised research department and its collaboration with universities and industry in the Benelux and internationally in Europe.