Clermont-Ferrand, September 5th 2013- Carbios today announced the appointment of Erik Orsenna to its Board of Directors. Carbios, a green chemistry company that specializes in the development of innovative industrial bioprocesses, offers novel, economically competitive approaches to recycling plastic waste and producing biopolymers.
Following the announcement of key collaborations (notably with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, INRA, and the French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS), Carbios is proud to welcome such an eminent figure to its Board of Directors. Erik Orsenna's experience as an economist, writer and essayist gives him the authority to express his views on the major economic and environmental challenges that we are now facing and make him an obvious choice to guide Carbios forwards.
Erik Orsenna shares Carbios's conviction that plastic waste should be a renewable raw material and wrote "Raw materials are gifts given to us by the Earth" in his book "Voyage aux pays du coton: Petit précis de mondialisation [Journey to the Lands of Cotton: A Brief Manual of Globalization]. This concept is perfectly in tune with the Carbios approach. Following his appointment, Erik Orsenna stated that "I am delighted to be joining Carbios - a company that develops innovative biological solutions to the ever more worrisome economic and environmental problem of plastic waste".
Carbios CEO Jean-Claude Lumaret welcomed the appointment of a person who is known for his in-depth knowledge of crucial issues, such as sustainable development and globalization. "Carbios has always joined forces with the best in the business to meet the major challenge facing us: although the volume of plastic waste is increasing all the time, a mere 20% is currently recycled in France! The key issue is how we can turn this waste into useful, recyclable or degradable materials". After thanking Erik Orsenna for his decision to join Carbios and support the company's efforts as a board member, Jean-Claude Lumaret concluded by saying "If we look at the life cycle of polymers in a new way, we can envisage turning plastic waste into a new, value-adding raw material".
Carbios leads a major cooperative project: THANAPLASTTM
THANAPLASTTM is a leading project in the field of the recovery of plastic waste at the end of its useful life. It brings together a number of academic partners (the INRA, the CNRS, the University of Poitiers and the Toulouse White Biotechnology research center) and companies (Deinove, Limagrain and Groupe Barbier). The project involves 60 researchers, has a budget of €22 million over five years and will receive €9.6 million in financial support from the French state innovation agency OSEO. Carbios will provide the lion's share of the budget (€15 million) and will receive €6.8 million of the OSEO funding.
The THANAPLAST™ challenge: To create genuine industrial value from plastic materials at the end of their useful life by developing cutting-edge technologies capable of producing, transforming and recycling a wide range of plastics from patented processes using biological catalysts with exceptional properties. "The synergies that we have created by pooling our skills will act as a formidable vector for accelerating innovation, which is essential for the development of breakthrough industrial procedures", emphasized Jean-Claude Lumaret.
About Carbios:
Carbios is a young innovative green chemistry company, whose mission is to find biological solutions to the environmental and sustainable development issues faced by industrial businesses. Carbios has acquired the rights to exploit research performed over a number of years by various public- and private-sector laboratories and has used them as a foundation for the development of innovative industrial bioprocesses for optimizing the technical, economic and environmental performance of polymers (including thermoplastic materials and synthetic or food-based fibers) by leveraging the unique properties of biological catalysts (enzymes). The company has initially chosen to focus its work on a strategic application sector: plastics. Carbios's growth strategy is based on a clear business model for industrial value creation that targets attractive markets, develops innovative, competitive bioprocesses and licenses them to major industrial stakeholders for commercialization. Carbios was founded in 2011 with financial support from the leading European venture capital firm Truffle Capital via the latter's Holding Incubatrice Série I Chimie Verte fund. For more information, please visit: www.carbios.fr
Contacts:
CARBIOS
Emmanuel Maille, Director of Corporate and Business Development
contact@carbios.fr
ALIZE RP
Caroline Carmagnol, CEO
06 64 18 99 59
caroline@alizerp.com
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