Origin Launches First-Ever Commercial Plant for Key Chemical Component
The world’s transition to sustainable materials got a boost with the startup this week of Origin 1, the first ever commercial plant making CMF or chloromethyl furfural.
A chemical building block, CMF is used to build numerous downstream products like para-xylene, the precursor to PET plastic, and FDCA, furandicarboxylic acid, which is used in sustainable products and materials like the next generation polymer, PEF, polyethylene furanoate. Located in Sarnia, Ontario, the plant will also produce HTC, hydrothermal carbon, whose applications include sustainable carbon black for automotive tires.
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These are intermediate chemicals and materials that go into a wide range of end uses, including clothing, textiles, plastics, packaging, car parts, tires, carpeting, toys, fuels, among others, with a $1 trillion addressable market. The new plant represents a significant scale-up of Origin’s technology platform for converting sustainable wood residues into versatile intermediate chemicals. Origin Materials is based in West Sacramento, California.
“We are thrilled to be making our intermediates available to industry on a scale never before achieved,” said John Bissell, co-founder and co-CEO of Origin. “The plant substantially scales up our revolutionary core technology platform.”
The plant is expected to play a key role in the development of higher-value products and applications for CMF, HTC and other co-products. These higher-value products are expected to be produced and sold at world-scale from future plants, including Origin 2 and Origin 3, and possibly licensed plants. According to Bissell, the commercialization of a molecule like CMF is historic.
He added that the startup is testament to the company’s strength in the face of pandemic-related supply chain issues and puts the firm in a good place to meet the high demand for renewable carbon-negative products. It is the culmination of 10 years spent building a platform for turning the carbon found in inexpensive, plentiful, non-food biomass like sustainable wood residue into useful materials while capturing carbon.
