Versalis acquires Beta Renewables and Biochemtex
Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.
In September 2017, it became known
that the Court of Alessandria admitted Gruppo Mossi Ghisolfi companies to the
“concordato preventivo” in accordance with article 161 sixth paragraph of the
Bankruptcy Law. The group included four companies focused on the biorefinig and
bioenergy sectors: Biochemtex,
Beta Renewables, Ipb (Italian Bio Products) and Ipb energia.
Since that time, several rumors have
circulated with regard to the future of those companies. Finally, late last
month, Versalis
(Eni Group's chemical subsidiary that has entered the biobased chemicals and
polymers industry) announced that had won the bidding process ordered by the Court of
Alessandria for Mossi & Ghisolfi's Group’s ”green” activities (see press
release, 26/9/2018). The operation includes assets and resources of the
four aforementioned companies, related to development activities,
industrialisation, licensing of technologies and bio-chemical processes based
on the use of renewable resources. According to the press release, this
movement will allow Versalis to develop an integrated technological platform of
chemicals from biomass, in line with the strategy undertaken in recent years.
The main innovative asset is the Proesa®
technology, which unlocks access to the fermentable sugars present in
lignocellulosic biomass, for production of transportation fuels and other
chemicals. The famous cellulosic
ethanol plant that Beta Renewables owned in Crescentino (Italy) is based on
this technology. Other important projects were under development before the bankruptcy of the group. The Blog will follow with
interest the coming events arising from this news.
Figure 1. Night view of the cellulosic ethanol
plant that Beta Renewables owned in Crescentino (extracted from the Biochemtex
website)