Page 118 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

86 4 Prospects for the Bazancourt-Pomacle Biorefinery Between Now and 2030

– Become a member of the group that manages the site’s staff restaurant.
– Take legal action; resolve regulatory issues concerning the whole community.

A single legal entity might not be enough to fulfil all these objectives, but legal
decisions need to be made on behalf of the whole site, and the community will have
to be willing to work formally together if the CEBB is to succeed.
Certain decisions may even be quite sensitive: for example, who, or what entity
will decide whether a team of scientists and entrepreneurs is eligible to work in the
CEBB incubator, and in what conditions. Governance mechanisms will also have to
be found to associate the chairs’ parent schools or universities with strategic
decisions, whilst not damaging the CEBB’s operations and its necessary
independence.
These challenges in terms of multidisciplinarity, public-private partnerships and
governance are implicitly illustrated by recent developments at the biorefinery.

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2 Recent Developments: 2014, a Turning Point ?
After 20 years of effort and perseverance by a handful of managers and their staff,
together with significant investment on the part of the farmers making up the
cooperatives, 2014 seems to be a turning point for several reasons.
Seemingly unconnected events appear to confirm the status of the Bazancourt-
Pomacle biorefinery as an innovation platform. Apart from the fact that the site
persuaded the organisers of the European Forum of Industrial Biotechnologies to
hold their conference in Reims in October 2014, three events demonstrate the
success of the innovation platform: the sale of SOLIANCE to a multinational
group, the attractiveness of the BIODEMO demonstrator, and the success of the
second-generation biofuel project FUTUROL.
Each of these three events is undoubtedly of international significance in its own
field, illustrating different but complementary competences.

2.1 The Sale by ARD of Its Subsidiary SOLIANCE
to the GIVAUDAN Group

The sale by ARD of its subsidiary SOLIANCE to the GIVAUDAN group took
effect on 1 June 2014. SOLIANCE is a firm that specialises in the production of
high value-added plant, microorganism and seaweed based ingredients. It was set
up in 1994 to take advantage of opportunities in the field of bio-based active
cosmetics, primarily for the L’OREAL group. It became known as the world leader
in DHA (a sunless tanning ingredient) and the European leader in hyaluronic acid

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The launch of the 3.8 billion euros public-private partnership Bio-based Industries Consortium
(BIC) adds to the nature of 2014 as a turning point.