W. A. de Vigier award winner: Bloom Biorenewables

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15.06.2020
Remy Buser, CEO Bloom

Most everyday products contain petroleum, an environmentally unfriendly ingredient. Bloom found a new approach to turn wood and agricultural waste into renewable materials that fully replace petroleum. Thanks to this solution, companies have a green and locally available alternative, reach eco-conscious customers, meet government guidelines, save on C02 taxes and help tackle climate change.

Thirteen million barrels of oil (petroleum), extracted from the earth’s crust end up in everyday products, which after their expiration, land in the environment causing pollution. While this practice must stop, replacing these materials is a challenge. Petroleum offers excellent building blocks, and its production processes have been optimised over more than a century, yet the industry has remained unsustainable. The only viable path forward is to efficiently mine carbon molecules from renewable sources, such as atmospheric CO2 and plants.

Plants are the second-largest source of renewable carbon. They can be harvested sustainably (FSC) and are used industrially on a global scale (e.g. pulp & paper, agriculture). However, the current processes are not designed to harvest materials that replace petroleum.

Bloom, an EPFL spinoff, developed the first industrial process able to valorise all fractions of the plants. The startup specifically designed these molecules to replace fossil-based molecules in future sustainable products. “We are currently the only ones able to extract everything that can be extracted”, Bloom CEO and cofounder Remy Buser explains in a video on Bloom’s website.

The market potential is virtually unlimited. Bloom is focusing on multiple verticals, such as fragrance and flavour, plastics, cosmetics and textile.

„In the future, we envision that plastics will be made from wood, perfumes from nutshells and all our side-products go into biofuel production. With our passion and know-how, we aim to revolutionise the chemical industry by providing new, cost-competitive alternatives to fossil-based molecules“, says Buser.

By creating the opportunity of locally sourcing sustainable building blocks for a wide range of everyday products, Bloom dramatically contributes to the mitigation of climate change.

Moving towards the piloting phase
The company is currently making batches of about 1 kg of bioaromatics and looking to scale up its process. To date, Bloom has raised more than $1.7 million from investors in addition to CHF 100’000 for winning the de Vigier award and CHF 150’000 from Venture Kick. The company is now seeking $4 million to build a pilot facility and, later, $60 million for a demonstration-scale facility.

(Press release/RAN)

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