Page 148 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

116 Annexes

actors on the platform can increase efficiency. Converting and upgrading the
bio-refinery over time can lead to processing new products and/or producing
other substances that are more valuable on the market due to fluctuating supply
and demand.
Eventually a modern definition of symbiosis would include other types of
exchanges and industrial synergies than physical flows. In an integrated
bio-refinery, exchanges of services, R&D contracts, maintenance contracts,
human capital flows, information flows, or even capital can be as significant as
the exchanges of raw materials, products or co-products.

2.5 Future prospects

Beyond a cross-sectional study, the issue of the sustainability and future
prospects of a certain type of refinery can be of interest to industrialists, investors
and governments. It is also an issue that arises with regard to environmental
fluctuations (markets, factor costs, public policies...) insofar as, for a refinery of
a certain size, the investment is significant (in 2014, the order of magnitude can be
estimated at between 150 and 300 million euros or between $200 million and $400
million). Thus, a period of activity of 10–15 years is necessary to recoup the cost of
such a venture.
The future prospects of a bio-refinery can be discussed along several lines:

– The continuous optimisation of the industrial process as mentioned above.
– In the case of rapid success, recreating the biorefinery in a different location can
be envisaged. This could use the model followed by POET (27 biofuel refineries
in the USA).
– In the case of difficulties with the supply of biomass at a certain price level,
diversification or conversion towards other biomass products can be envisaged.
– In the case of successful product diversification via R&D, subsidiaries or start-up
firms can supplement the initial biorefinery to develop molecules of interest for
bio-plastics, bio-implants, cosmetics, or specialised chemical products (succinic
or lactic acid...). This is the model followed by the Bazancourt-Pomacle
biorefinery, with the creation of a joint research centre in 1990, ARD followed
by the construction of a demonstrator in 1992, BIODEMO, and a cosmetics
subsidiary in 1994, SOLIANCE.

3. Methodological Challenges The main challenge of a case study concerns the
confidentiality of data. This challenge is even more significant in the case of a
multi-actor integrated biorefinery. The issue of the time scale is also important
because over 10 years a biorefinery’s operations evolve enormously due to process
optimisation. Finally, the source of the study (internal or outsourced to an outside
institution) is also a matter of discussion.