Page 90 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

58 2 An Original Business Model: The Integrated Biorefinery

Fig. 2.22 Turnover on the
Bazancourt-Pomacle site,
2000–2011 (This graph does
not include data for the sugar
cooperative, because Cristal
Union publishes sales figure
for the whole of the group but
not for each of its companies)

3 The Bazancourt-Pomacle Biorefinery: An On-Going
Success Story?

During this section, we will investigate whether the Bazancourt-Pomacle
Biorefinery has enough strong points to continue its growth. To do so we will
carry out a SWOT analysis (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) and will
illustrate our analysis with an application that will demonstrate the extent of the
threats that hang over the biorefinery.
We will also discuss whether all of the companies present on the site are at an
optimal level of technological maturity, or whether there is still untapped potential
for development within these firms.

3.1 Technological Readiness Levels: TRL

TRL are scale measuring the degree of maturity reached by a technology. The scale
was developed by NASA to manage the technological risk presented by its
programmes. Initially it was made up of seven levels, which was increased to
nine in 1995.
Since then the TRL scale (c.f. Box 2.5) has been adopted in numerous fields.

Box 2.7 The Nine Levels of Technological Maturity
TRL Definition
1 Basic principles observed and reported
2 Technology concept and/or application formulated
3 Analytical and experimental critical function and/or characteristic proof of
concept
4 Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment
5 Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment
6 System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment
(continued)