By Shannon Behary, Senior Editor
20 September 2022- “The time is now to transition to a more circular economy, a more circular chemical industry.”
That is the conviction of Niels van Stralen, director and co-founder of ChainCraft, a young Dutch company with precisely that mission.
ChainCraft has developed and begun commercialising feed-grade fatty acids made from fermentation, rather than from the petrochemicals or oleochemicals (which are largely palm-based). According to van Stralen and his colleague Jeroen van Dorp, commercial director, this move to fermentation-based production is much more sustainable.
“Compared to the petrochemical and oleochemicals processes, it’s less energy-intensive, which leads to a significantly lower carbon footprint.”
Moreover, there is also the aspect of upcycling, or turning low-value residue streams into a high value product that would otherwise require virgin resources to produce. “We start with a very low-grade feedstock which is now being used mainly for biogas production…and we create more value out of these streams, we make better use of them in terms of sustainability.”
Beyond this, such a production process also provides the opportunity for a more robust supply chain. Because fermentation like this can take place outside of a large, centralised chemical production complex, it can be situated closer to where the products are consumed. “We can produce those chemicals locally. We are producing them in Amsterdam instead of in Malaysia or Indonesia,” explains van Stralen.
Finally, the inputs are widely available, and not subject to the vagaries of geopolitics that can make petro- and oleochemical prices so volatile. “[We are] not dependent on whether or not Indonesia has a new ban on the export of palm oil, and therefore the price increases four-fold within a few months,” adds van Dorp.
These features also help keep costs down, allowing the product to be offered at a competitive price compared to existing fatty acid sources. “The fact that it is more sustainable will make many readers think [it’s] more expensive…but it is price competitive,” says van Dorp.
The product and the process
ChainCraft’s fermentation process results in a product which is a blend of C6 caproic acid and C4 butyric acid-- specifically, 60% caproic and 30% butyric in the sodium salt form. It is available as both liquid and powder, and can be supplied with GMP+ FSA assurances.
Such quality standards are important, because the animal nutrition market is the primary application for its fatty acid products, at least for now; the salt form of the final product is best adapted to this market, whereas other applications for fatty acids, such as detergents, lubricants, or coatings, tend to use the acid form. While the company does anticipate adding the capacity to make these forms when it expands into larger-scale production, “the animal feed industry is the most important for now, and will be the most important, or one of the most important, for the full-scale factory in the future.”
Thus it has been a priority for ChainCraft to work with animal nutrition partners to test the application of the product. Of course, the idea of using short- or medium-chain fatty acids as alternatives to antibiotics has been well established, but as Jeroen van Dorp explains, there was still work to be done to prove this specific product’s worth. “It’s a new blend. We had to convince [potential customers] of the benefits...”
“Some companies would use them both [C6 and C4] separately, and maybe blend them themselves but in different forms—maybe not the salt form [but as] an acid or glyceride—or maybe just one or another of the acids, and so on. This offering in combination, in this exact blend, in this form, was rather new, and it of course it needed to be well-supported [with evidence]. And indeed, that’s what we did, with good test data.” According to van Dorp, this work remains ongoing, but “it is succeeding…so far, it’s going well.”
These tests are being carried out with product made at a 2,000 tonne per year facility in the Port of Amsterdam. In van Stralen’s words: “It’s a first commercial factory, so it’s a small-scale commercial factory, but [one] which is going to be profitable. It’s at this scale that we demonstrate that it’s commercially feasible.”
Still, the company very much has its eyes on a full-scale factory, which they say will be 10 times bigger. “The plant’s construction will start in 2024, and the operations will start in 2025—[though] not in the beginning of 2025,” van Stralen shares. “It will most probably be in the Netherlands, or northwestern Europe, but we have a preference for the Netherlands.”
ChainCraft’s process is based around open-culture fermentation technology, a fermentation technique which makes use of a variety of naturally occurring bacteria. As van Stralen explains, “That’s very different as compared to other industrial biotech processes where mainly one bacteria is being used, most often genetically-modified, and these bacteria have to live in a very sterile environment, have to be fed with, most of the time, a pure sugar stream... if other bacteria enter these bioreactors, the bioreactor becomes contaminated, and the whole batch can be [wasted].” In other words, ChainCraft is relying on a robust, low-fuss fermentation concept using non-GMO bacteria.
That robustness matters, because it allows for the process to use a variety of residues which are not perfectly homogenous, something which can sometimes be a barrier when it comes to recycling waste streams back into higher value applications like this. “We focus on plant-based residues coming from the agri-food industry. We have potato, sugar beets, corn, wheat producers or factories which are [transforming] these crops into their derivatives. And those factories have significant volumes of wet byproducts, wet residues, which are ideal for our process,” says van Stralen. “In our current factory in Amsterdam we use fruit and vegetable residues coming from companies who supply the larger supermarkets in the Netherlands with fruit and vegetables, so it’s more or less fruit and vegetable cuttings.”
The final product, however, does not reflect the heterogenous nature of the fermentation feedstock: “We produce within a very narrow bandwidth, so [even] with slightly fluctuating input materials, we are able to produce a stable output. That’s due to the two fermentation steps which we have in our process, where we can really steer towards this narrow bandwidth of fatty acid chain lengths.”
Indeed, this is one of the particular points of distinction for ChainCraft. The company executives acknowledge that the concept of fermenting fatty acids is being explored by other industrial biotech companies. “One major competitor of ours is focusing a bit more on the shorter chain acids; we are focusing a bit more on the longer chain acids, and that’s specifically due to the fact that we have a special piece of technology in which we can elongate the shorter acids to longer ones. So that’s the competitive edge we have... we are able to produce these somewhat higher value longer molecules,” reveals van Stralen.
It is, therefore, an extremely active field of inquiry, as the technology catches up with the priorities of buyers for greener production processes. “I think we are going to see a lot more of these innovations popping up in the in the coming years because the demand is there and feed companies, chemical companies, they want, and they need, to move away from petrochemical and palm oil-based chemicals. And they are obliged to work with the more natural and bio-based feedstocks,” he opines. “I think it’s a trend, and I hope to see many, many more of them, because that would be a good sign.”
The company’s journey and the road ahead
ChainCraft itself has been working on the concept for a dozen years or so. Van Stralen and his business partner, who he says invented the technology, bought the patent from Wageningen University in 2010. Since then, they have been working on upscaling it from a laboratory process to a commercial process: “that took more or less ten years, which is a normal pathway for upscaling such technologies,” claims van Stralen.
“In the beginning were mainly technical challenges…how to get this fermentation stable, how to reach the production rates, the product concentrations, the efficiencies which are needed to make it economically viable, and especially [how to ensure] the stability of the fermentation—run it over very long periods of time to be sure that you create a stable final product with little variability. That was the main challenge for the first, let’s say, 4-5 years,” he recalls.
“But that was mainly at lab scale; when we had the technology up and running at lab scale, the upscaling was, of course, challenging, but we didn’t face any major technological issues. When we had the proof of concept at lab scale [on sound footing] the upscaling went fairly well.”
Going forward, the company remains interested in further refining its process and expanding its portfolio. “We want to diversify regarding the products we make, not only by making other products and fatty acids, but also making longer acids, for example, or making more odd-numbered acids like C5 or C7, so diversifying in the full fatty-acid spectrum” van Stalen asserts.
Moreover, there might be the possibility to branch out into other types of chemicals with various applications. “Potentially, if you look at the mixed culture, or the open culture fermentation technology which is the core of our process, we are able to produce other molecules as well: certain alcohols, certain other types of additives which potentially can be a feed additive but not [necessarily].”
Perhaps most importantly, though, the company is looking to secure offtake agreements for its growing production capacity. “That’s one of our major goals: to enter partnerships with leading feed additive, premix companies, who want to be the first in line to buy from our full-scale factory.”