As part of Sustainable Industry Challenge – Chemport Edition and Suiker Unie are looking for innovative solutions to convert sucrose and use it as a feedstock for biopolymers. Since plastics are an important product of modern-day life and the majority is currently produced from fossils fuels, Suiker Unie has the ambition to impact the plastic production process by offering a sustainable alternative, namely biopolymers. We’re looking for technologies that can support in this conversion process.
Suiker Unie is with more than 750 employees, a major sugar producer in Europe and part of the Royal Cosun group. As well as developing, producing and selling sugar and sugar specialties, it processes all parts of the sugar beet into natural ingredients for the food, energy, biobased and related industries. All components of the beet are used, nothing is wasted. Corporate sustainability is woven into Suiker Unie’s strategy for the benefit of their customers, growers, and staff.
It is desired that such a conversion process is competitive with traditional routes (using crude oil) for producing polymers. Also, additional benefits of using sucrose from European sugar beet as compared to glucose from starch will be a great advantage.
