MATERIALS / RECYCLING PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 07+08/23 www.petpla.net 10 Glycol production from renewable raw materials From wood and paper to PET by Kay Barton Forestry and paper company UPM, a leading global producer of sustainable paper, wood, biochemicals and composite products and energy, with operations in 11 countries on six continents and headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, is about to start up its new biorefinery in Leuna, Germany. The €750 million investment to produce biochemical products is part of the company’s strategic plan to use renewable versus fossil raw materials for use in various industries, including automotive, textiles but also plastics and packaging. A key product from the new plant in Leuna will be a woodbased bio-MEG, which should soon gain a foothold in PET production. We spoke to Dr Michael Duetsch, Vice President of the UPM Biochemicals division, about a technological vision with potential and reach. May 30, 2023 We met: Dr Michael Duetsch, Vice President UPM Biochemicals “Our business is based on forests,” Dr Duetsch began the conversation. “We plant and harvest forests to make renewable and recyclable materials and products. Many applications and a variety of materials are based on organic chemistry and require carbon in their production. While decarbonisation is happening in energy production and in many aspects of transport, organic chemical compounds, which are made of carbon molecules, cannot be decarbonised,” said Dr Duetsch. His enthusiasm from the dynamism and energy with which UPM is building a new business is palpable. He sees what he is about to do with UPM in Leuna as pioneering a gamechanger. Dr Duetsch has now been part of UPM for 12 years. Before his current job, he had already worked for 16 years in the chemical industry for various companies. Now he is in the process of creating a new business area in the company - a biorefinery that converts wood, residues and sawdust into chemicals. He further explained: “The inclusion of a renewable carbon cycle and its role in durable applications is, in our view, an essential component for sustainability in chemistry.” Sustainability, the biochemical way The history of the UPM Kymmene goes back to the beginnings of Finnish forestry. The Group’s first mechanical pulp mills, paper mills and sawmills were commissioned in the early 1870s. Some 150 years later, the company, which employs more than 17,000 people worldwide and had a turnover of €11.7 billion in 2022, is putting alternatives to fossil fuels at the heart of its operations with its “Biofore Strategy”, already ten years in the making, ambitiously driving its own transformation to become a leader in the bioeconomy. “One of the first success stories based on this strategy was our biofuels business unit,” Dr Duetsch recalled. “Here we had developed a process to convert tall oil, a by-product in pulp mills, into biodiesel and bio-naphtha.” Since 2015, UPM has been operating a corresponding plant in Lappeenranta, Finland, with an annual capacity of 120,000 t, and is currently examinThe biorefinery in Leuna under construction Vice President of UPM Biochemicals Dr Michael Duetsch
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTY0MjI=