Avapco, a subsidiary of Brazilian biotech fi rm, GranBio Technologies, has been awarded $500,000 in funding from P3Nano, a public-private partnership between the US Endowment for Forestry & Communities and the USDA Forest Service (USFS), along with an additional $230,000 from the USFS under a separate programme to advance scale-up and commercial introduction of the Nanocellulose Dispersion Composite (NDC) rubber masterbatch for the tyre and rubber goods markets.
The breakthrough NDC masterbatch is the result of a four-year joint development program between Birla Carbon and GranBio, designed to address growing sustainability demands from the tyre industry in terms of improving both tyre rolling resistance and vehicle fuel economy through enabling the incorporation of sustainable, bio-derived nanocellulose into commercial rubber compounds. P3Nano’s funding programme targets projects designed to advance the commercialization of cellulosic nanomaterial's.
Under the competitive award, the companies will demonstrate continuous scale-up of production of the NDC at GranBio’s biorefi nery in Thomaston, Georgia for anticipated full-scale factory and on-road tyre trials by global partners within the tyre and mechanical rubber goods industries. Under the additional competitive award from the USFS’s Wood Innovations programme, designed to expand and accelerate market growth for wood products, the companies will prepare an engineering package, market analysis, and fi nancial modelling for the fi rst NDC commercial plant.
Mr. Bernardo Gradin, CEO of GranBio Technologies, said, “The NDC is a key example of GranBio’s mission to “Enable Net Zero” solutions through the development and deployment of sustainable biomass-based technologies across the biofuels, biochemicals, and advanced biomaterials sectors. The partnership with Birla Carbon materialises a common strategy to enable net-zero emission in tyres and the automotive value chain.”
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