Page 13 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

xii Executive Summary

complex financing arrangements, the construction of an industrial demonstrator, the
development of synergies to benefit from larger scale outputs: these are all
“response” strategies to sustain and develop their activities.
In Chap. 2, the authors ask whether the Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery
possesses enough assets to continue its growth. To do so, the report proposes a
SWOT analysis with two applications: that of the threat that certain players might
leave the site and that of the strength of the circular economy that the biorefinery
makes possible.

Ecology or Industrial Symbiosis: A Key Advantage (Chap. 3)

Industrial ecology or industrial symbiosis refers to the synergies that are produced
between actors in the same integrated biorefinery. These synergies mainly take the
form of commercial exchanges of by-products within an industrial cascade phe-
nomenon, where the product of one industrial firm (an output) becomes an input for
another firm. This cascade can continue down through several levels in a vertically
integrated framework. Some exchanges can take the form of services (R&D,
maintenance, shared staff canteen, joint procurement, loans of staff, etc.).
The systematic study of industrial symbiosis is relatively recent (1989), but is
increasingly attracting interest from governments, investors and analysts because of
its advantages in terms of sustainable development and circular economies. Such
studies are however difficult to carry out due to the confidentiality that surrounds
competitive activities.
This study of the industrial symbiosis at the Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery is
the first of its kind. It shows that already at the beginning of the 1990s, with the
creation of the shared R&D firm, ARD, industrial ecology was a key element of the
biorefinery’s strategy. Initially, an “agrosystem” formed by combining the efforts
of farmers, refiners and the biorefinery developed progressively into an industrial
estate and then an innovation platform, for which symbiosis is a key element: in
both the sugar beet and cereal (wheat) sectors, exchanges of thin juice, sugar syrup,
glucose, alcohol and CO 2 have been developed between the different companies.
Two support resources and a shared-use mechanism are also worthy of note:
water and energy in the form of steam, and the shared management and spraying of
waste water, are key components of the local symbiosis. With the original
CRISTAL UNION sugar plant (which was the initial driver of the site) as a base,
the development of the CHAMTOR starch and glucose plant has led to synergies
with the creation of high technology firms: SOLIANCE developing molecules
for the cosmetics industry, BIOAMBER producing succinic acid, CRISTANOL
producing bioethanol, the Air Liquide workshop for the recovery and processing
of CO 2 and WHEATOLEO producing detergents. The pilot schemes and
demonstrators (BIODEMO and the FUTUROL project) also benefit from these
synergies.
This development of synergies is on-going in the sense that processes are
constantly being improved, the use of by-products is being developed and