Avantium's First Global Commercial FDCA Plant Completes Commissioning of Main Units

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Dutch renewable materials company Avantium has announced that the purification unit at its flagship FDCA plant in Delfzijl has completed commissioning. With this, all major process units at the plant—including sugar dehydration, oxidation, purification, and utilities—have completed commissioning. The project has now entered the integrated start-up phase and is preparing for the production of its first FDCA products. This project is the world's first commercial-scale FDCA production facility.

The plant is designed with an annual capacity of 5,000 tons of FDCA, and construction was completed in October 2024. FDCA, or 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid, is the core raw material for producing polyethylene furanoate (PEF). Avantium uses its YXY technology to produce FDCA from plant-based sugars, which is then used to produce the renewable polymer PEF. The products can be applied in food and beverage packaging, films, fibers, and other polymer materials.

According to the latest start-up schedule, Avantium will continue throughout the remainder of 2026 to advance the full start-up of the plant, the production of the first FDCA batches, and product certification, while preparing for commercial sales under existing offtake agreements. The company expects that, subject to the successful completion of start-up and product certification, commercial deliveries will begin by the end of 2026; it is estimated that approximately 24 months will be needed from plant start-up to reaching design full-load capacity.

The project had previously adjusted its start-up timeline during the commissioning phase due to construction quality issues with some titanium pipe welds, incurring approximately EUR 7 million in additional capital expenditure. The repair work on the relevant titanium welds was completed by the end of April this year, after which the project refocused on advancing the start-up of core process units such as oxidation and purification. The completion of commissioning for all major process units now means that the project has moved beyond unit-level commissioning into the phase of integrated plant-wide coordination and commercial start-up.