Emmanuel Ladent, CEO of Carbios

Emmanuel Ladent, 52, a graduate of the Neoma Business School, has 30 years of experience in the automotive sector and more specifically in mobility. Most recently, he managed the MICHELIN Group’s largest business line, the Automotive Global  Brands division. His management career is characterised by a strong international background, with more than 20 years spent working on several different continents. Specialised in business transformation through innovation, Mr. Ladent has contributed to the development of subsidiaries with multi-billion euro turnovers. Through strong leadership, he has been able to unite interdisciplinary and intercultural teams around a common vision and ambitious goals.

Our first demonstration unit is operational since September 2021.

The demonstration plant marks the culmination of the development of the C-ZYME® technology. It will allow the validation of the enzymatic PET recycling process’ technical, environmental, and economic performance, as well as the design of future industrial units. By the end of 2022, its operation will enable the complete engineering documents for the process (Process Design Package) to be drawn up for the building and operation of a 40,000-tonne/year capacity reference unit as well as future factories to be run under licensing agreements.

Each Consortium company has successfully manufactured sample bottles – based on Carbios’ enzymatic PET recycling technology – for some of their leading products including: Biotherm®, Perrier®, Pepsi Max® and Orangina®.

Today’s announcement is the culmination of nearly 10 years’ research and development by Carbios to create a new process and supercharge an enzyme naturally occurring in compost heaps that normally breaks down leaf membranes of dead plants. By adapting this enzyme, Carbios has fine-tuned the technology and optimized this enzyme to break down any kind of PET plastic (regardless of color or complexity) into its building blocks, which can then be turned back into like-new, virgin-quality plastic.

Production of the first PET bottles with 100% Purified Terephthalic Acid (rPTA) from the high PET content textile waste. This world-first confirms the capacity of our technology to recycle PET textile waste and thus opens up access to an additional recyclable waste stream of around 42 million tons per year.

Carbios published an article in the prestigious scientific journal “Nature” entitled “An engineered PET-depolymerase to break down and recycle plastic bottles”. It is co-authored by scientists at Carbios and its renowned academic partner, Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI.)

Alain Marty, Chief Scientific Officer of Carbios and co-author of the Nature article: “I am very proud that Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, has validated the quality of the work carried out by Carbios’ scientists and the TBI laboratory on the development of our proprietary enzyme and the revolutionary PET recycling process. The performance obtained confirms the industrial and commercial potential of the process, which will be tested in 2021 in our demonstration plant.”

Publication of a PET waste degradation yield of 90% in just 10 hours, which represents a major step up from the initial yield of 1% in several weeks.

Strategic alliance with INSA Toulouse through its internationally recognized laboratory TBI (Toulouse Biotechnology Institute), a mixed research unit (INSA Toulouse, INRA, CNRS.) Called “PoPLaB” (Plastic Polymers and Biotechnologies), this laboratory is the culmination of seven years of scientific collaboration that resulted in the first PET bottles produced by enzymatic recycling of used plastics

This project involves piloting the process on plastic PET waste, with an enzymatic depolymerization step in a 1m³ reactor. During the course of the project, PET will be transformed into products such as bottles and textile yarns, in order to demonstrate the circularity of the process.

Our pilot plant optimizes the stages of pre-treatment of plastic and textile waste, depolymerization of PET and purification of monomers.

The Consortium’s partners hope to industrialize Carbios’ technology and thus increase the availability of high-quality recycled plastics to support their commitments to sustainable development. As part of this collaboration, technical steps and support are planned to ensure a good supply of 100% recycled PET plastics worldwide.

Production of the first PET bottles with 100% Purified Terephthalic Acid (rPTA) from the enzymatic biorecycling of used plastics. This major step is a world first that confirms the potential of our technology to engage the industry in a responsible transition towards a circular economy model.

Carbios, Limagrain Ingrédients and the SPI “Société de Projets Industriels” investment fund operated by Bpifrance, join forces to create a joint venture, Carbiolice, which will produce and market enzyme products for the production of biosourced and biodegradable plastics.

Signing of a license enabling Carbiolice to use the patented enzymatic biodegradation technology of plastics developed by Carbios

The offer, which closed on December 12, 2013, met with considerable interest from the general public. The overall demand for the offer (OPO and Global Placement) amounted to €14.15 million.

One of the first projects in the field of end-of-life plastics recovery, bringing together, around Carbios, several academic and industrial partners (CNRS, INRA, TWB, Poitiers University, Deinove, Limagrain and the Barbier Group) and supported by Bpifrance. Project successfully completed in 2017.